Water from a Stone
by Lomonaaeren
Summary: HPDM slash. Harry decides to do something about the mistreatment of Slytherins in Hogwarts after the war. He could have chosen easier tasks. Such as climbing Mount Everest. COMPLETE.
1. Hogwarts Is Always Listening

**Title: **Water from a Stone

**Disclaimer: **J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.

**Pairings: **Harry/Draco

**Rating: **R

**Warnings:** Violence, sex, some angst. "Eighth-year" fic.

**Summary: **Harry decides to do something about the mistreatment of the Slytherins in Hogwarts after the war. And then discovers that he could have chosen an easier task than the one he did. Such as climbing Mount Everest.

**Author's Notes: **This will be a short WiP, probably eleven or twelve parts. While it is angsty in some places, it's also very fluffy, and not epilogue-compliant. The title refers to the saying, "Easier to get water from a stone."

**Water from a Stone**

_Chapter One—Hogwarts Is Always Listening_

When the rumors first reached Harry, he didn't care that much. Yes, it would be better if the idiots in Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, and Hufflepuff—Harry didn't think anyone _smart _was doing it—would leave the Slytherins alone, but on the other hand, the Slytherins had chosen to come back to a school where they knew they were discredited. They should have expected insults and loud comments about how they would have been perfectly happy to live in a world dominated by Voldemort. They could put up with that or they could go whinging to the professors. It wasn't Harry's problem.

But then things changed.

It was on a September evening when he was coming back from Quidditch practice, and had stopped to stare up at the moon and just think. He did that a lot now, not that he was thinking about anything in particular. He would let vague thoughts pass through his mind about how he had never expected to be alive to see that moon, and how it was wonderful he was.

A muffled sound came from behind him.

Harry jumped, his wand in his hand as he whipped around. Despite the fact that the war was over, and everyone sane agreed on that, there were people who might _not _agree. Such as Death Eaters who could sneak through the schools' renewed wards.

The sound didn't come again, but this time Harry saw a flash of movement behind a slender tree that had been planted in memory of the dead. He went towards it, checking warily behind him and to the sides to make sure that he wouldn't fall victim to an ambush.

The muffled noise came again when he was closer to it, and this time it sounded like a grunt of pain. Harry jumped around the tree, his wand held up, expecting to find Death Eaters or maybe Slytherins tormenting a Gryffindor.

Instead, it was Pansy Parkinson looking like she was fighting for her life with Michael Corner and Terry Boot.

Harry hesitated. Parkinson was the one who had decided that they should throw him to Voldemort. She still looked at him with a sneer when they passed in the corridors, as if to say that she wouldn't back down from her beliefs and the world would be a better place with Harry gone.

But her face was covered with bruises, and even though she planted an elbow in Michael's stomach now and made him bend over, wheezing, Harry was pretty sure that she hadn't started the fight.

Besides, if _Harry _wanted to duel her for that, it would have been one thing. But it was unfair for two people to attack her at once.

He aimed his wand at Terry's feet and snarled, "_Reducto!_"

The way he'd aimed the curse, it tore the ground at Terry's feet apart, but not anything else, not him or Parkinson's arms where he held them. She went flying in one direction, Terry in the other, and Harry quickly cast a Cushioning Charm so that she would land safely. Then he stalked towards Michael and Terry, trying to make sure that he looked as menacing as possible.

Michael was the first to recover, since he hadn't actually had a Blasting Curse fill his mouth with flying dirt. He took a quick gulp and said in a hiss to Harry, "What are you doing?"

"Removing some rubbish," Harry said. He discovered he was shaking, and didn't know why. Was he really that angry? But he'd known this was happening. "What did you think you were going to do to her, Corner? Was a little torture on the schedule next? How about some rape?"

Michael flinched, the way Harry had meant for him to do. "We wouldn't do that," he said. "Death Eaters did that." His voice faltered, filled with memories, and he looked away, twisting his fingers together.

Harry felt the little stab of guilt that he always did when he thought about what the people who had been at Hogwarts last year had suffered, but he did his best to forget about it. As Hermione had said, he couldn't have been here to protect them _and _gone on the Horcrux hunt. "So beating her up is an acceptable activity?" he demanded. "You're telling me that Death Eaters never did _that_? Neville's showed me the scar where they broke his ribs with their kicks."

Terry, scrambling back up, shook his head impatiently. "But they didn't do it to Slytherins," he said. "That's important. We're trying to pay the Slytherins back for what they did to us."

Harry really wanted to bang his head against the sapling, but it was just a baby and didn't deserve that. "I thought I had the monopoly on stupid arguments around here," he said. "How much did Slytherin _students _help the Death Eaters? I know they got favored sometimes, but they were really just as much victims as anyone else."

"Sometimes they helped," Terry said, folding his arms. "Why do you think there were no Slytherin students with Neville in the Room of Requirement?"

"Because Neville and the others distrusted them," Harry said. "Don't try to confuse me, Terry. I know the answers to your questions as well as you do, probably better. Remember that I went through the damn war fighting Voldemort. And why does that name still make you act as though he's going to come around the corner?" he added impatiently, a moment later. "I thought it was only Slytherins and cowards that flinched like that." Then he paused meaningfully.

"We're not cowards!" Michael said, his face turning red.

"Beating up a Slytherin, two on one?" Harry asked. "Yes, you are. And you didn't follow proper dueling procedure, either, so it's not like it was a fair fight. Did you take her wand away?" He'd got good at seeing guilt on people's faces, and cast the Summoning Charm with a roll of his eyes. "_Accio _Parkinson's wand." Michael's pocket let it go, and Harry tossed the wand in Parkinson's direction without turning to see if she picked it up. "Cowards," Harry repeated.

"You can't hold us to Gryffindor standards." Terry still had his arms folded, apparently because he thought Harry lived in terror of that. "We're not the House of bravery."

"No, you're the House of intelligence," Harry said, "and so I would have expected you to think about whether you can really punish Slytherin students for what Death Eaters did, and whether it was a good idea to do this in case someone found out about it. Besides, _Gryffindors _are the ones who are supposed to beat up Slytherins. We have a rivalry. If you're doing things that Gryffindors do, it's no surprise that we hold you to the same standards."

There was a snicker. Harry looked around suspiciously. He didn't think anyone was waiting nearby to help Michael and Terry or they would have shown up already, but still.

"Oh, _fine_," Michael said, turning and stomping away towards the castle. "But we'll tell everyone that you're a Slytherin-lover, you know."

"You're not that good at making up insults!" Harry called to his back. Terry glared, but Michael didn't turn around. Harry watched them until they were out of sight, balancing his wand in his palm and feeling excitement pulse through his veins. Then he turned to Parkinson.

She was standing up, arms folded in a far more intimidating way than Terry had managed, face cleared of bruises. She'd probably cast Healing charms while he was busy, Harry thought. She said, barely moving her lips, "If you did that to earn the gratitude of Slytherin, you ought to remember how much pain you've caused us in the past."

Harry sneered at her. "Yes, I absolutely _need _the gratitude of Slytherin, which is in such a subordinate position to the rest of the school right now."

He'd thought that would make her angry, but instead a thoughtful look flashed across her face. In a minute it was stone again, but she went on staring at him until Harry shrugged and turned away.

"Try to stay away from them," he told her over his shoulder. "And next time, use a Patronus to call for help."

"I don't know how to do that," Parkinson said, voice cool and precise.

"Get someone to teach you." Harry hurried on his way, trying not to think about how few people in the school, other than the ones he had instructed in Dumbledore's Army, knew how to form one. Even the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, Professor Meadows, might not know. He was more a research wizard than a fighter, and Harry was learning a lot about how spells came to be, but not much about how they _worked_.

It wasn't his problem, he told himself. He had saved Parkinson once, but there was no way that other Slytherins needed saving.

_Even if they did, let someone else be the bloody hero for once._

* * *

Except that other things kept happening, and it seemed that no one else was willing to be a hero.

Harry noticed some people looking at him at breakfast the next morning, but he mostly ignored it. He knew Terry and Michael would have told their friends, but that was fine. Those friends could come and talk to Harry if they wanted. He really didn't think he'd get ambushed and beaten up, not when they still felt a kind of awe around him.

He didn't understand the stares that he was getting from the Slytherins, though. From what he knew about Slytherins, Parkinson wouldn't have told them about Harry rescuing her because it would make her look weak.

But there they were. Harry ignored them as best he could and dug into his eggs, listening to Hermione with half an ear.

"It really never is too early to start studying, Ron," she said, and spread a parchment out on the table, miraculously clearing a space for it among the toast, marmalade, eggs, omelets, and half-a-dozen other things that the house-elves thought people required to eat well in the mornings. "Look. I have a schedule for every day of term, and for every day of the holidays—"

"The holidays are supposed to be times when we can _relax_," said Ron, groaning around a mouthful of toast. Crumbs sprayed the table. Harry grinned. After the complexities he had faced last night, it was good to be in a world that he understood so well, with his best friend who talked with their mouths full and another best friend obsessed with studying. "You can't have study schedules during them. It's immoral."

"This is the series of exams that will determine _the rest of our lives_," Hermione said. She had acquired a trick since the war where she lowered her voice instead of raising it when she wanted to make a point. Harry had discovered her studying rhetoric books during the summer, where he thought she'd got it. She leaned towards Ron, her face grim. "Do you really want to give up the chance to do well?"

Ron caught her hand and kissed it. "I know at least one thing I'll be doing for the rest of my life," he murmured. "So I'm not as worried about it as you want me to be."

Hermione blinked, and a sharp blush made its way up her cheeks. Harry hid his grin in the eggs. Hermione had a bad habit lately of turning around, catching him smiling, and asking what was so funny, in a carrying tone that said she expected him to share the joke with the entire Gryffindor table.

Maybe because his best friends were both silent for once instead of chattering, Harry heard the crash when it happened. He turned his head.

Malfoy was sitting at the head of the Slytherin table, staring at the broken plate in front of him. A Hufflepuff seventh-year—Harry knew from seeing him in the corridors that he was a prefect, but not what his name was—had apparently dropped something on the plate, and Malfoy's face and robes were covered with splatters of his food.

"Ooh, _sorry_," said the Hufflepuff, eyes wide and innocent. "I reckon I didn't see you there." He paused, then added, "But I don't have to say sorry, do I, because how can you see that food in the middle of all the filth that already covers you?"

Laughter came from the Hufflepuff table, with the others, except Slytherin, a beat behind. Harry also saw that some of the others, including Hermione, looked disapproving, but no one spoke up against it.

Malfoy, his face absolutely stone, lifted one hand and wiped the back of his sleeve across his cheek, removing some of the marmalade. Then he bent down and began to clean his robe off with a napkin that Parkinson handed him. Harry wondered why he didn't use his wand, and then realized the prefect was still hovering near the table, staring expectantly at Malfoy. The moment Malfoy tried, Harry thought, he'd probably take it as a challenge.

It was exactly the same way Dudley had bullied Harry. It was obvious, it was nasty, and it was _stupid._

And no one had ever spoken up for Harry, either, even when they could clearly see that something that had happened was Dudley's fault and not Harry's.

Harry was on his feet and moving across the Great Hall before he thought about it, although Ron said something that sounded like, "Malfoy brought it on himself, mate. Just think about all he did!"

Both Malfoy and the Hufflepuff glanced up to watch him come. The prefect looked mildly interested. Malfoy gave him the same stare that Parkinson had last night. Harry thought they probably practiced it together and wondered idly who had won the Slytherin All-Comers Glaring Championship.

"What you just did," Harry told the Hufflepuff, who was tall and handsome and looked like Cedric. Well, that just made it worse, then, didn't it, Harry thought, clinging stubbornly to his anger instead of giving in to the temptation to sit back down.

"Yes?" The boy grinned, obviously thinking Harry was going to praise him.

"_That's _the best you can come up with?" Harry said, and snorted at him. "And in front of the professors, too?" He glanced up at the High Table, and then realized that none of the professors were paying attention. The shattering noise and the taunt that had seemed so loud to him hadn't reached their ears. Or maybe they ignored it, too, because they were content to watch the Slytherins get tormented and Slughorn, the current Head of Slytherin, didn't care about anyone except people with connections.

The thought made Harry sick, and he took a deep breath and tried to remind himself that some of the teachers in his primary school really hadn't known he was being bullied, either.

"You should have heard some of the things he said to me last year," the Hufflepuff muttered, turning red. "You should have heard some of the things he said to my sister."

"And you never thought that maybe he did that because it was the only way to survive with Death Eaters listening?" Harry gave him one pitying glance. "You never did anything that you weren't proud of last year?"

The Hufflepuff gave him a cool stare back, having some time to recover his balance now. "No. Not like that."

Harry shook his head. "But you didn't stand up for someone every time you saw them beaten up, either, did you? You looked away and kept walking and were just glad that it wasn't you." He knew all about that, because he had seen other kids do the same thing when Dudley was beating Harry up. It didn't really make them good or evil, the way Harry saw it, but it _did _mean that they didn't get to _say _they were purely good.

_I could do without all the flashbacks to my childhood this morning._

"Like you did." There was a sneer on the boy's face this time. "You weren't even _here_."

Someone shifted behind Harry, at the Slytherin table, of all places. He ignored it. He was pretty sure they weren't going to cast a curse at his back, and that was all he cared about at the moment. "But I know what it was like," he responded quietly. "And I can think about it more rationally because I _wasn't _here. Yeah, it hurts to see Slytherins getting away with less pain from the Death Eaters. But I know that they were hurt, too, if not as much. And if you really think things would have been a lot better for them if Voldemort survived—oh, for Merlin's sake, _stop flinching!_"

"You don't know anything," said the Hufflepuff, when he'd recovered from his apparent attempt to sink into the floor just in case Voldemort's ghost came back to eat him. "And you haven't done anything so far when we got our revenge. Why are you doing something now?"

_Good question._

Harry turned and looked at the Slytherins for the first time since he'd started lecturing the Hufflepuff. They stared back at him with that stony look, except for two. Parkinson had her eyes narrowed as if she was trying to figure out what game he was playing.

And Malfoy was glaring at the Hufflepuff now. Harry wondered if he was actually more angry at him than at Harry.

_Ridiculous. I'm the one who fought with him all these years. _Harry turned back to the Hufflepuff and shrugged. "Because you did it really blatantly," he said. "And because I wanted to. Go away."

The Hufflepuff's face was bright red with frustration now. "No," he said, folding his arms. _Why do people do that? _Harry thought. _It doesn't intimidate me. _"You don't get to just march in like this and stop it. You didn't care. Leave us alone and let us get our revenge the way we want."

"You're not war-hardened people getting revenge," Harry said contemptuously. "Or you would be trying to find the remaining Death Eaters. You're a bunch of children beating up on other children."

More scuffles behind him, but if the Slytherins stabbed him in the back over that, they weren't worth defending anyway. Besides, it was more fun to watch the Hufflepuff look like Uncle Vernon. "Do you know who I am?" he said.

"Yes," Harry said. "Someone who hurt someone who didn't hurt you."

"You can't _know_ that!"

"But it sounds like it, and you haven't contradicted me." Harry started to walk back towards the Gryffindor table. "Tell anyone else who wants to do something like you did that they'll have to deal with me—not because I'm suddenly a Slytherin sympathizer, but because what you're doing is wrong, and someone has to stop it."

"You're taking the Slytherins under your protection, then?" That was a girl leaning over from the Ravenclaw table, her eyes big and bright under flyaway dark hair. Harry glanced at her and wondered if she was one of the ones who had felt bad about the Slytherins being taunted and was now glad that someone else was taking over the duty so that she didn't have to.

"Yes," Harry said. "Why not?" He smiled, thinking about how much it would annoy Malfoy and how Hermione would nod gravely in approval and how Ron would ask him if he'd gone mad. "From this moment forwards, all the Slytherins in Hogwarts are under my personal protection, and anyone who hurts them deals with me."

The torches on the walls roared to life, lifting pillars of white fire into the air and arching them all over the Great Hall to meet in the middle of the ceiling. Harry, staring with his mouth open, saw them collide and begin to shower sparks down. He lifted his wand without thinking to cast a shield that would protect people. Maybe this was another attack on the Slytherins.

The tip of his wand caught on fire, though Harry would swear that none of the white sparks were anywhere near it. The spark sizzled towards him, and Harry tried to react, but his fingers seemed to have clamped down on the wand, the way they would if it was metal a lightning bolt had run through.

The fire touched him.

It didn't hurt, but wound about his neck and arm like chains, and then burned away his robes and shirt down to the level of his heart. There, it pressed in heavily, so it was like being touched by solid sunlight, and then vanished.

Harry, looking down in the ringing silence that had filled the room, noticed with annoyance that he had yet _another _scar, this one shaped like a sword, over his heart. _Just for once, I'd like to encounter mysterious magic that doesn't scar me._

The professors at the High Table were on their feet now. McGonagall held out her wand and chanted something. Harry looked up, but the white fire from the torches had already dimmed, and McGonagall's spell didn't appear to do anything.

Hermione was by his side then, of course, and she carefully cast a Healing Charm on his chest. Harry heard an angry sizzle, and then he felt a stinging pain that made him hiss and swat her wand away. The scar, though, remained.

"What did you _do_?" Hermione asked him, as though it was his fault.

"I don't bloody know!" Harry whispered back, which made Hermione scold him for language.

Ron, who was next to him, looked at the scar and said, "Um, Harry, that looks like an oath-scar."

"A what?" Harry demanded, wondering if it was fate that wanted him to collect all these scars and what it was going to do once his skin was so covered with them that he didn't have room for any more. Maybe it would begin layering scars on _top _of scars. Harry had a mental flash of himself looking like an etched piece of parchment.

"A scar that you get when you make a binding oath," said Ron, who by now was turning green. "Usually, it's a deliberate brand and you need witnesses for that sort of thing, but your magic is so powerful, and the torches reached out and ran a branch of fire over each table…I think everyone in the Great Hall was your witness."

"My magic is not that powerful," Harry began, patiently. He wasn't going to let Ron get away with that sort of thing when he had defeated Voldemort because of the Elder Wand and dying for everybody.

"Congratulations, Potter."

Harry turned his head. Malfoy stood next to him, wearing a big, nasty smile. He bowed when he saw Harry looking at him, his eyes bright.

"You made an oath that the powers of Hogwarts heard," he said. "The Great Hall is the heart of the castle, and the castle's always been a place of concentrated magic. Now you're oath-sworn to protect us."

"But I didn't mean…" Harry said, and then buried his head in his hands as he heard McGonagall asking questions and Hermione clucking her tongue like Mrs. Weasley and people at the other tables starting to react.

Malfoy patted his elbow. "Don't worry," he said in a cooing tone. "We're all quite impressed by your bravery and your dedication to making sure that none of us come to harm in a school where almost everyone is determined to harm us. And binding yourself with an oath that means you'll burn up if you break it, no less!" He leaned in and added, so close to Harry's ear that probably no one else heard him, "Harry."

Harry groaned aloud.

Things like this _always _happened to him.


	2. The Night In Which Harry Got No Sleep

Thank you for all the reviews!

_Chapter Two—The Night In Which Harry Got No Sleep_

"Do you understand what you have done, Mr. Potter?"

Harry stared at his fingers. Currently, they were piled together and making small explorations across the backs of his hands. Harry wished them luck. Perhaps they would find their way to a country that was distant from the Headmistress's formidable, piercing gaze.

"I asked you, Mr. Potter," McGonagall went on, in a lower voice, "if you know why what happened, happened."

"Those are two different questions," Harry pointed out helpfully, and then winced as McGonagall tried to use her eyes as nails.

"Answer them," McGonagall said, and Harry decided that he should be glad he got the chance to, instead of simply being measured for his coffin.

"I didn't know that an oath like that was possible, ma'am," he said. "It just—I got so fed up with the Slytherins being attacked, and so I said that. I didn't know the Great Hall would take it as an oath. I didn't know that the words would tie me so literally." _I didn't know that Malfoy would be so bloody pleased about it, but I should have. He's probably been waiting to take revenge on me since the war. _

But Harry didn't say that last part aloud, because there were quicker ways to commit suicide.

"Someone should have explained this to you," McGonagall said, and pulled her glasses off to clean them with a weary sigh. "I blame myself more than you. It seems I never had time, and of course I am used to students who come from pure-blood families or who learn the secrets of Hogwarts from gossip within their Houses. But you have always stayed close to your best friends exclusively and not leaned much on the knowledge of others within Gryffindor."

Harry scowled. He couldn't be sure, but it sounded like she was still trying to blame him.

"Why did no one else notice what was happening to the Slytherins, Headmistress?" he asked. "I mean, that prefect smashed Malfoy's plate in the middle of the Great Hall, but no one did anything."

"I saw nothing," said McGonagall. "As for the rest, I had heard rumors, but seen nothing substantial. I will not punish until I do."

"Well," said Harry, "now you've heard _and _seen. Will you start working to keep the Slytherins safe?" He held his breath. Even a _little _help would make it easier for him to keep this impossible oath.

"I assume you heard the same rumors, Mr. Potter," McGonagall said, with that mild manner she had that still made Harry want to sink through the floor. "But you made no motion to act until today. Why?"

"Because I thought they deserved some of what they got," Harry muttered. It sounded horrible, said aloud, but it was also true. "It would have been too good for them if they'd come back to the school and everyone just ignored them. I know that they tried to survive last year, but some of them also participated in the torture. People aren't going to _forget _that some people did that, even if it was to survive. And how can someone tell the difference between that and the few people who probably enjoyed it, just by thinking about it?"

"Yet you don't seem to think that an argument yourself, from the way you responded to Mr. Matthieson's taunting of Mr. Malfoy," McGonagall said.

"I didn't once I saw that," Harry said. "Teasing is one thing. Turning their backs or refusing to be in the same room with Slytherins is one thing. I wouldn't want to be in the same room with Bellatrix Lestrange, either." He shivered in spite of knowing that she was several months dead. He didn't know if he would ever stop having nightmares about her, or nightmares where she blurred and twisted into other figures: Voldemort, Uncle Vernon, Fenrir Greyback. "But hurting them badly and then hanging around and waiting for them to do something else is wrong. So is beating them up," he added, thinking of the way Terry and Michael had gone after Parkinson last night.

"That was not what happened today," McGonagall said. "That is not why you made the oath."

Harry touched his chest automatically, and then snatched his hand away. He hoped that wouldn't become one of his immediate gestures, the way touching his forehead still was. It would look creepy and suggestive. "Yeah, but, Headmistress, why are you talking to me like this? Ron says an oath like this can't be broken, and Malfoy told me what the consequence is. You're sounding like you want to blame me. Why?"

McGonagall hesitated. Then she said, "I do not think that you should have to play hero, still. I am concerned that you made the oath because you feel the urge to cast yourself in that role. And as unfair as it is when I am the Headmistress of the whole school, I do feel more concern for the mental health of one of my Gryffindors."

Harry smiled a little. "I made the oath without thinking, and I didn't know what it would do. I thought it would just make people hesitate when they went after Slytherins, because they would have to deal with me if I heard about it. I was thinking the other night that I wanted to stop being a hero, in fact."

_And I'm thinking you should have done something about it before now. _

"Very well," McGonagall said. "Then I will not attempt to hinder your fulfillment of the oath. But I do ask that you not kill anyone, and that you not torture anyone, and that you not wound them more than you have to."

Harry stared at her. _She must really think I'm bloody deranged. _

_Or maybe she knows something about the oath that I don't._

"I won't do that," he said, and his quiet tone seemed to reassure her, because she nodded and leaned back in her chair as though he had walked behind her and lifted a huge weight from her shoulders.

"Very well," she said. "Then I will hold you here no longer." Another smile worked its way across her face. "I assume that your friends will be anxious to discuss this with you."

* * *

"Oh, Harry, how _could _you?"

Harry scowled. Hermione was practically crying, and he had no idea why. _Both she and McGonagall think I did this on purpose, when the expression I was wearing after the oath should have told them I didn't. _"I don't know, Hermione," he snapped. "It's not like I woke up this morning and thought, 'I know! I'll put myself in a potentially life-threatening situation for the sake of people I don't even like! I haven't had enough of _that _in my life already!'"

That at least made Ron grin, if reluctantly, and Hermione laugh through her tears. She wiped them away and tried to be stern, saying, "You shouldn't be so irreverent, Harry. This is _serious._"

"Yes, I know," Harry said, and then cast a little Stinging Hex without turning around.

Lavender squealed and rose from behind the couch he, Hermione, and Ron were sitting on as if someone had stung her on the arse, which in fact was exactly what had happened. Harry scowled at her. "Why don't you go sit somewhere else? You're not close to the fire back there, you're not with your friends, you're not doing anything but spying on us. It's a little _obvious._"

He thought Lavender might have answered back if it was anyone else, but that awe people had of him was a useful weapon sometimes. Lavender nodded, shamefaced, and went back to her usual corner of the Gryffindor common room. Harry kept an eye on her until he was sure she had. He wouldn't have been that wary with most people, but Lavender was dating Terry Boot.

He wondered how much Terry had told her about beating up Parkinson and getting stopped by Harry, assuming he had told her anything at all. Lavender was a gossip and might have spread the secret around school where the professors couldn't help but overhear it.

_Unless they were determined not to._

Harry put aside that disturbing thought for later, although he knew he would have to consider it, since McGonagall had said some things that made him think it. For now, he told Hermione and Ron, "I have to fulfill the oath. So that's what I'll do."

"I'm worried about you, Harry," Hermione said, and took his hand. "What if the oath destroys you because someone did something against the Slytherins that you don't know about and have no way of finding out? I wish you hadn't been so reckless."

"I didn't bloody _know_," Harry said.

"The oaths don't work like that," Ron said, cutting across the beginning of Hermione's lecture about language. "At least, not the ones that leave scars. They want to be fulfilled. They aren't going to destroy Harry for something he doesn't know about, only if he turns his back and ignores the persecution of Slytherins." He looked as though he was about to swallow a lemon. Harry assumed it was because he'd had to use the words "persecution" and "Slytherins" in the same sentence without approving of their linking.

Hermione blinked. Ron smirked at her. Harry grinned back. It was nice to see Ron enjoying his rare triumph of knowing something that Hermione didn't.

"Well," Hermione muttered, and settled her robes around her with a quick shake, the way she tended to do when she was uncomfortable. "That's good, at least. But how will the oath let Harry know that he needs to do something?"

Ron shrugged. "I don't actually know anyone who has an oath-scar like that. My father just said that the oaths have an alarm aspect or something."

* * *

Harry found out the "alarm aspect" that evening, about an hour after he'd gone to bed and spent enough time staring at the canopy and wondering how in the world he was going to fulfill that stupid oath that he probably hadn't slept more than fifteen minutes.

Someone had launched a Stinging Hex at his chest. No, it was a _Burning _Hex. Harry sat up with a gasp and clapped his hand to his chest. Over his heart. Over his scar.

And now it felt as though someone was behind him, shoving him, gripping his shoulders, and shaking him all at the same time. Harry groaned as he sat up and pushed his way out of the curtains, throwing his school robes over his pyjamas. At least the oath was telling him in what direction the persecution of Slytherins was.

He yawned and trotted down the steps, through the common room, and through the portrait hole in a daze. And then he woke up, because there was a scream coming from just down the corridor. Harry snarled and started running. It sounded as though someone had decided to start tormenting a Slytherin right next to Gryffindor Tower, maybe because that was where they had caught them but probably because they _could_.

No prefects in the corridors. No professors. So much for the school being patrolled at night, Harry thought wryly as he turned a corner. Of course, since Snape's death, there didn't seem to be anyone who had the same gift of turning up right where Harry was and where he wished they wouldn't be.

Any melancholy thoughts about Snape were interrupted by the scene he found when he got to the end of the corridor. Michael and Terry stood there again, floating a wand out of the reach of a second-year Slytherin girl, who looked as though she was about to dissolve in tears. She was jumping for the wand, but of course she couldn't reach it. Michael and Terry just moved the wand higher when she tried, then dropped it temptingly lower again.

And they were right at the head of a staircase, which the little girl's jumps carried her further and further towards.

"Don't you two _learn_?" Harry snapped, and, as they turned to gape at him, hit them with a Neptune's Net.

The spell was one he'd picked up this summer, when it had occurred to him that he ought to start studying if he was going to be an Auror. It acted like water at first, but it settled over Terry and Michael in solidifying lines, dripping and tangling their movements until they looked more like shambling crystal statues than people. Harry sneered at them, shook his head, and turned to the Slytherin girl. She was staring at him with huge eyes and hadn't made an attempt to retrieve her wand, although it was hovering right above her head.

"Are you all right?" Harry asked.

She didn't say anything, just clasping her hands behind her back and twitching a little. Maybe she thought he was there to attack her, Harry thought. He had assumed that the news of his oath would have spread among the Slytherins by now, but clearly not.

"I'm not going to hurt you," he said. He reached up and snared the wand with one hand, then held it out to her. She came towards him, staring like a deer, and snatched it, then scuttled out of reach.

"It's all right," Harry began, but she turned and scampered away. Harry stared after her and sighed.

Then he solidified the hold of the Neptune's Net on Terry and Michael, so that it wouldn't dissolve before morning, and went back to bed, wondering what would happen when he had to deal with someone in Slytherin who was older and more likely to lash out instead of be frightened of him.

* * *

The scar dragged him out of bed this time after two hours of brooding and ten minutes of sleep. Harry stamped all the way through the common room and ignored the sleepy protests that followed him. If he and the Slytherins had to suffer, so did everyone else. Maybe that would inspire them to stop being _stupid_.

Because, this time, the two people who had a Slytherin cornered near the hospital wing—and who thought it was a good idea to put _all these stairs_ in Hogwarts? Harry reckoned he had to blame the Founders—were Gryffindor sixth-years, friends of Ginny's. Harry didn't remember their names, and he didn't think he should ask. He just waited a minute to be sure that they were the ones doing the fighting, and to make sure that they didn't bother responding to his shouted warning. Then he lashed out and tied them up to the wall by their hands and ankles. It wasn't painful, but it was uncomfortable, and it would also last all night.

Then he turned around and realized the Slytherin they had cornered was Malfoy.

Harry stared for a minute. Then he looked back at the girls and asked, "Was this a set-up? I know you could have fought them, Malfoy."

"As flattering as your opinion of me is," Malfoy said, a little breathlessly, smoothing down his rumpled shirt and picking up his wand from where it had dropped when the girls flew into the wall, "it _is _rather hard to do that when they have my wand and blood is dripping into my eyes." He tilted his head, and Harry realized for the first time that his distinctive hair was dark with blood from a wound on his scalp. It was no wonder Harry hadn't realized it was Malfoy right away.

"Idiots," Harry told the girls on the wall, for good measure, and ignored the way their eyes got big and they whimpered. At least they were being quiet. Harry didn't want to listen to more self-justifications right now. He moved towards Malfoy, calculating the amount of blood on the floor. It was enough to make him curse under his breath. "Do you need to go to the infirmary? Or can you heal yourself?"

"What, Potter, no noble offer to heal me?" Malfoy fluttered his eyelashes. Now that he was closer, Harry could see how long they were. It made him wonder why no one who wanted to hurt Malfoy had tried cutting them. Surely that would damage his ego at least a little. "I'd thought you'd want to do that, hero as you've bound yourself to be." He paused meaningfully. "Of course, considering Kane came back to us tonight screaming about how scary you are, perhaps you only made that oath to draw attention to you."

"Oh, shut the fuck up," Harry snapped, and cast one of the few healing charms he knew, one that was supposed to close shallow wounds and scrapes. Malfoy gasped, which probably meant it worked. Harry knew it felt as though someone had splashed cold water on his head when Hermione used it. "I tried to help her. But she ran away because she thought I was going to hurt her too, I reckon."

"A word of advice, Potter." Malfoy tossed and caught his wand, never taking his eyes from Harry's face. "If you want to be Savior to the Slytherins—and I can't blame you, since there seems to be a distinct lack of other jobs for saviors at this particular point in time—then you'll have to act as if you _like _us in the future."

"I didn't get into this because I like you," Harry replied briefly, and wheeled away. Malfoy was safe, the girls were humiliated, and he was going back to bed.

"Aren't you going to escort me to the dungeons?" Malfoy pitched his voice higher. "I might be in danger on the way there. Someone could try to put a Harry Potter mask on me, and you have _no idea _what damage that would do to my reputation."

"What reputation?" Harry said. "The one where you're a Death Eater, or the one where you're a coward?"

Malfoy caught his breath as though someone had tried to choke him. Harry stood where he was, clenching his fists, and told himself that he was _not _going to apologize. Malfoy was taunting him, _again_. He might be a victim this time, but he couldn't leave well enough alone. He had seen Harry make an oath in front of everyone, he had seen Harry go after someone who bothered him in front of everyone, and that still wasn't fucking _enough _for him.

"Low, Potter," Malfoy whispered at last. That surprised Harry, because he'd thought the git would have retreated to his precious dungeons by now. He looked over his shoulder and saw Malfoy staring at him with his eyes narrowed. "Even for you."

Harry turned around and stalked back towards him. He was fed up, and no one else could listen to him because no one was _awake_, and the Slytherins seemed convinced that either he was going to beat them up in turn or that he was someone they could tease at will. So he'd dump those frustrations on Malfoy's head.

"I didn't do this because I like you," he told the prat, who folded his arms in response. _Great, now he's part of the club that thinks that will intimidate me, too._ "I didn't do this because I want to be in your good graces. I didn't do this because I admire the Slytherins, or because I think Snape was a brave bastard who didn't deserve the ending he got. He was still a bastard. _You're _still a bastard. Because they bother you doesn't make all of you into brave martyrs. I promised to protect you because you don't deserve the shite you were getting. That's all."

Malfoy's breathing was too quick. "When you just hurt me worse than anyone has managed to so far, this year," he whispered, "I think I have a right to object."

Harry stared at him. "I give up," he said. "I absolutely give up on comprehending you. That's the kind of insult that you would laugh off from any other Gryffindor, and you know it. I talked to Ron and Hermione, and they said that they've both seen you take worse this year with that stone face you showed Matthieson. Why do I get elected to the position of Dispenser of Unforgivable Insults?"

There was silence for a moment in the corridor, although Harry realized he didn't know if you could count it as silence when it was filled with the noise of Malfoy breathing like a bellows. Then Malfoy turned his head aside and muttered something before he took off running towards the dungeons.

Harry blinked after him. The mutter had sounded like, "If you don't understand by now, then you never will."

The only thing Harry could think of was that Malfoy still thought the worst of him, assumed that he loved all the attention he was getting and that he would do anything to keep it. It would make sense, because he thought Harry had made that oath to get love from the Slytherins in turn. And so he would get angry when Harry insulted him because Harry was receiving the attention he thought he should have got.

Or something.

"I absolutely give up," Harry told the air again, and then told the girls on the wall, "I'm remembering your faces, and if you do that again, then I'm going to turn your faces _inside out_. So your eyes are only staring at the back of your skulls."

They stared at him in horror. Harry stomped off to bed, only partially consoled by the notion that at least he could still frighten people he needed to frighten.

* * *

The third time the scar called him out of bed, some Gryffindor he vaguely knew was turning a Slytherin boy upside-down in the entrance hall. Harry turned _him _upside-down with _Levicorpus _and shook him so hard that not only his wand but a collection of dirt, stones, feathers, and stolen Potions ingredients fluttered out of his pockets, and his teeth rattled in his head.

Then Harry tied him to the ceiling with another Neptune's Net, gave the Slytherin boy's wand back, touched his own wand to his throat, cast _Sonorus_, and screamed into the depths of the castle, "_Go to sleep!_"

Whether that worked or not, he never knew, but at least he did lie awake in the bed, fuming, for the rest of the night. He didn't close his eyes, but then again, no one else decided to try Slytherin-hunting, either.

* * *

The next morning, half the school was looking at Harry crossly. That didn't include the Slytherins, who were looking at him as though he was a basilisk who had tried to Petrify pure-bloods. Harry focused on his food and did his best to ignore them.

He was in such a _mess_.

McGonagall did stand up at the High Table that morning and make a little speech about how attacks against fellow students wouldn't be tolerated. That would mean exactly nothing, Harry thought, stirring his spoon moodily through his porridge, especially since the other professors didn't pay a whit of attention. Someone could probably still get away with hurting the Slytherins on their watch.

It made Harry furious, and sick. It made him think of primary school and the teachers who had known what Dudley was doing but hadn't cared, or had looked away. Why wouldn't they interfere? Why was it up to him, who was just a student even if he was a hero, too, to do their job?

It would make it a bit easier if someone had ever taught the Slytherins to defend themselves—

Harry's head came up, and he cackled. The cackle must have been at least a little evil, because Ron and Hermione both looked at him in concern. Harry waved a hand and muttered, "Just had a new idea, that's all."

Why couldn't he conduct something like the Dumbledore's Army for Slytherins? Assuming any of them would show up, of course, and not run in terror like Kane or rage like Malfoy. But Harry had to think that some of them were more moderate in their response, more rational, like Parkinson. They would probably come.

Now he had to decide when and where to hold it.

"Oi, Potter!"

Harry jerked his head up. He knew the voice had come from in front of him, but what he focused on more than anything else was the white object hurtling at him. A jar, a jug, a plate, it didn't matter, since it hit him in the face and threw him back violently enough to ram his head into the wall.

_Well, _he thought sardonically in the moment before the pain knocked him unconscious, _maybe an open attack on me will be what's needed to sting the professors out of their complacency._

In the moment of the pain actually knocking him unconscious, Harry thought of something he hadn't in years: the vacant grin Dudley used to wear when he was planning something particularly stupid.

Stupid, but it still ended up with Harry getting hurt.


	3. The Endless and Necessary Battle

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Three—The Endless and Necessary Battle_

Harry opened his eyes, looked up at the ceiling, and sighed. He was in the hospital wing, he knew from that one glance. He didn't look at a _lot _of ceilings, but on the other hand, it didn't require much intelligence to tell the hospital wing from, say, the ceiling of the Gryffindor common room.

_I bet whoever threw that jug or whatever it was at me doesn't have that level of intelligence._

Harry smiled to himself. He hoped it was a grim smile, though without a mirror he wasn't sure. It might be slightly mental, depending on any potions that Madam Pomfrey had already poured down his throat. But he had a plan, and it was a plan that would work out nastily for everyone involved if they didn't try to stop the person who had hurt him.

He groaned tragically and raised himself on one elbow, rubbing the back of his head. As he had thought, he had a large knot from where he was thrown into the wall, and a raised tender spot on his forehead where the thing had struck him.

"Mr. Potter!" Madam Pomfrey was hovering next to him, biting her lip and looking at him as if she assumed that he'd try to play Quidditch in the next second. "Lie back down!"

Harry only groaned again, as if he was in too much pain to pay attention to her instructions, and took a quick scan of the hospital wing. McGonagall and Slughorn stood a few beds away, turning around to face him as if startled out of a conversation. _Perfect._

"Mr. Potter." McGonagall recovered faster from the shock, at least, and strode over to him. "Are you all right?"

"Not really," Harry whispered.

"He had a concussion, which is healed now," Madam Pomfrey interrupted. "But I'd like to keep him overnight for observation. The potions will take a longer time to work on the superficial injuries—" which made no sense, and made Harry suspect that she was covering for something else even before her next words "—and pressure on them or exacerbating the injury could hurt him worse."

_Even _she _doesn't trust them to keep me completely safe from other students who want to harm me, _Harry thought, looking up with some satisfaction into McGonagall's wide eyes. _That must hurt. _

"Mr. Potter, I am sorry you were injured," said McGonagall formally, as though apologizing to a teacher or someone else equal to her in rank. That definitely wasn't the way she treated him yesterday, Harry thought. He didn't know what had caused the change, but he was going to use it, because the oath and his outrage wouldn't let him do anything else. "We do have the person who did it in custody, and the Aurors have already investigated."

"Really?" Harry asked. "That was a quick investigation. Who was it, and why did you feel that you had to call in the Aurors instead of just disciplining him or her the way you would any other student?"

McGonagall blinked as if she didn't understand why he was asking those questions, but admitted, "Mr. Matthieson, the prefect who attacked Mr. Malfoy in the Great Hall yesterday. It seems that he didn't like you humiliating him, and so he cleared off one of the larger plates and threw it at you. The Aurors were involved because he is of age. But they found that he hadn't used Dark magic, and so Mr. Matthieson remains in the school, though of course he has a month of detentions."

Harry shook his head slowly. That caused the knot at the back of his head to hurt and Madam Pomfrey to cluck, but Harry couldn't have cared less about both of those right now. "And so the punishment I used to get for talking back to Snape, he gets for trying to kill me."

"He didn't try to kill you, Mr. Potter!" McGonagall said, drawing herself up. "Don't be ridiculous! It was a stupid and childish thing to do, but there is no reason to assume it was undue malice on his part."

"Yeah," Harry said, folding his arms and sitting up. Madam Pomfrey put her hand on his shoulder, but Harry looked at her, and her hand fell away like a burned butterfly. Harry told himself to memorize that configuration of his eyes and eyebrows if he could, since apparently it was his best scowl yet. "Except that if he'd taken me out of the way for a while, caused more damage than he did, it would leave the Slytherins fair game."

McGonagall sighed. "I have told you, Mr. Potter, that none of us realized the extent of the persecution that was happening on their part. The Slytherins will be protected."

Harry laughed sharply. "I'm sure they'll be _really relieved_ to hear that, especially when someone can assault the Boy-Who-Lived in the middle of breakfast and get away with it. I'm sure they'll trust every one of your promises."

McGonagall tried to exchange a glance with Slughorn, as if she assumed that he held the answer. Slughorn didn't respond, though, or look at her. He was watching Harry instead, in a silence that Harry thought he understood.

"Mr. Matthieson is not getting away with it," McGonagall said. "I told you, his month of detentions—"

"But that's not going to be enough for him," Harry said. "Not for someone stupid enough to attack me over this in a public place. He'll do something else, and you won't be able to punish him because he won't use Dark magic, and he'll do it again, because for him, the pleasure outweighs the punishment. You'll treat him like a child, and in the meantime, he gets to make Hogwarts a hostile environment for other _children._" Harry was proud of himself for remembering the phrase "hostile environment" from one of Hermione's lectures about bullying a few years ago.

Of course, at the time, Hermione had been lecturing him and Ron about going after Malfoy. Harry tried to bury that memory. Everything had changed, and he knew better. Brooding on his mistakes from his past wouldn't do anything to protect the Slytherins _now_.

"I do not know what you expect us to do." McGonagall rubbed her forehead as if she were the one who had a scar connecting her to a dead Voldemort there. "We have given him the largest punishment we can."

"Expel him," Harry said. "Snape used to tell us that that was the punishment for an assault on another student. Hermione told me that it was in _Hogwarts, A History._ And he's done it not once but twice now, and probably more than that, since no one deigned to notice what the Slytherins were suffering."

"That punishment has not been applied in some time," McGonagall said. "If it had been, you would have been expelled in the past, Mr. Potter."

"I know," Harry said. "I was a righteous little shit most of the time I was here." McGonagall had the "Language!" expression on her face, but Harry charged right on, not giving her the chance to scold him. "But I never got the impression that you would have tolerated people beating up on and tormenting the members of one House, either. So make a change now. Expel Matthieson. Say it was because he attacked me, not because he attacked Malfoy. Not enough people care about that right now." _I'm going to change their minds, but it will take some time. _"It fits, and I think a lot of people will be happy to see him go."

McGonagall exchanged a look with Madam Pomfrey this time. She seemed to be looking for some kind of evidence that Harry was too exhausted or in too much pain to make this kind of demand, but Madam Pomfrey pursed her lips and gave a judicious little shake of her head.

"What's the matter?" Harry raised himself further, and ignored the way his head suddenly ached as though someone had smacked it. "Why are you so reluctant to do this? Matthieson isn't all that special, Headmistress. If Malfoy had done this, I think you would have expelled him at once. Why are you hesitating now?"

McGonagall gave a sigh that came from the bottom of her toes. "I had hoped that things would return to normal after the war," she murmured. "I had hoped that a few assaults on the Slytherins were only the natural result of anger and depression and would calm as the students' emotions did. I did not want to disrupt the usual course of things."

"In trying to be too fair, you were unfair," Harry said. "Expel him."

He knew no one else would ever have got away with demanding this of McGonagall. But he had saved the sodding world last year, and she was the one who had started treating him like he had a right to demand things when he woke up. Being the Boy-Who-Lived ought to come in _handy_ for once, instead of being an unwanted burden.

"He is quite correct in his application of the school rules, Headmistress," Slughorn said in his fawning voice. "The punishment is not always the same, but the Headmistress does have the right to expel a student, particularly with a public assault such as this."

McGonagall had at least always made her decisions quickly. She nodded. "Very well, Mr. Potter. Mr. Matthieson will be expelled."

"Thank you." Harry lay back down and closed his eyes. "That makes me feel safer." _And it'll make things a little easier if people see someone who attacked Malfoy and other people get in trouble for it._

"Does it." McGonagall's tone was dry, not a question, and she left the hospital wing without waiting for a response. Madam Pomfrey began fussing over Harry, and Harry opened one eye to look at her.

"What happens if the oath summons me out of bed right now?" he asked.

She sighed. "I don't know." For a moment, she smoothed her hand over his hair, and Harry felt a little bad for using her. On the other hand, while she'd healed the Slytherins, probably, she hadn't tried to stop the bullying or find out what was going on, and Harry wouldn't have had to be in this situation if she had. "I suspect you would have to go. But try to be careful."

Harry nodded, and watched as she bustled off in the direction of the cabinet where she kept most of her potions. Then he realized Slughorn was still there, and looking at him.

Harry glared. "So what's _your _excuse? They were torturing and hurting the members of _your _House, and you didn't call them on it? Were you blind, or just standing in the corner and watching because it was well-connected students doing it?" Not that Harry had ever heard of Matthieson, and he didn't think the students he had stopped last night were particularly powerful, but he still didn't know all that much about the political structure of the wizarding world.

Slughorn nodded. "I should have been a better Head of House." He didn't offer any excuses, and after a short time, Harry realized that he wouldn't get any. "I am glad that someone like you is defending them. They deserve that."

"Will you help me?" Harry demanded.

"What can I do?" Slughorn blinked and looked around the hospital wing as if he expected the answer to the question to materialize from the walls.

Harry rolled his eyes. "Tell your students not to wander outside their common room at night. Tell them to travel together; I think the bullies are a lot braver when they find them alone. Tell them that I'd like to teach them how to defend themselves, and anyone who wants to learn should meet me tomorrow night at eight on the seventh floor."

Slughorn blinked rapidly for a few seconds. Then he said, "I can certainly do that. I will." He looked thoughtfully at Harry again. "You didn't have to make this oath."

"I made it out of ignorance," Harry said. "Not because I suddenly discovered some soft spot for Slytherins. Tell them that, if anyone asks." It probably wouldn't encourage the people who were afraid of him, but at least it might make them think he hadn't done it to get close to them and then betray them from the inside, or whatever scary reason their twisted minds had come up with.

Slughorn smiled. "That doesn't matter to some people," he said cryptically, and slipped off before Harry could ask him what that meant.

_Bloody Slytherins and their bloody riddles. _Harry punched the pillow into shape and lay down, closing his eyes. He'd got a bit of sleep earlier, he reckoned, but being unconscious was no substitute for real rest. He'd just have to hope that the oath didn't wake him up in the next little while.

* * *

"Potter."

Harry opened his eyes and slowly turned his head, clutching his wand under the blankets. He knew that voice, and there was no good reason for the owner to approach him in the middle of the darkened hospital wing unless he meant to attack Harry.

Malfoy stood in front of his bed, his hair brighter with moonlight, his arms folded (of course). He looked at Harry slowly and contemptuously. Harry yawned in his face and rolled over on his side to go back to sleep.

Malfoy pinched one of his feet. "Wake up. I want to talk to you."

"And because of that, I should stay awake?" Harry opened one eye. "Why? You haven't given me any indication that this won't be another session of insults, and since I was up most of last night saving skinny Slytherin arses, I need my rest."

Malfoy looked as if he was biting his tongue. Then he took a deep breath and said, "I just want to talk about what Slughorn told us today, and what you said to McGonagall. She was the one who expelled Matthieson in front of everyone at lunch. She said it was because of the attack on you, but a lot of people took it as a favor to us, too."

"Oh, she did it already, then?" Harry smiled, and didn't care if the smile was nasty and sharp. This was Malfoy, after all. He probably would stumble around in confusion before a polite smile. "Good. I didn't want her to wait."

Malfoy tilted his head slowly from one side to the other, as if he wanted to imitate a rainbow's arch. Or, for all Harry knew, that was a secret arcane gesture that would make his life miserable. Really, he didn't care. Slytherins could wrap themselves up in their riddles and vanish for all he cared.

_Except that might make the oath hard to fulfill._

"You _made _her expel him?" Malfoy's voice was hushed. "How did you do that?" Then, before Harry could even make a pretense of answering, he closed his eyes and held up one hand in front of him. "Wait, don't tell me. Because you're a Gryffindor and she was the Head of Gryffindor, and you're the Golden Boy and she does what you bloody well please."

The bitterness in his voice snapped Harry out of the half-sleepy daze he was still in. He had hoped for a slightly civil conversation with Malfoy, but of course that wasn't happening. If Malfoy tried, he would start sneezing, since he was obviously allergic to politeness.

"She didn't want to expel him at first," Harry snapped. "She just wanted to give him a month of detentions—because she wants so badly for everyone and everything to go back to normal, as if that could be the case after a bloody _war._ I made her change her mind, yeah, because she was guilty over what happened to me. But she didn't fall over herself to oblige me. She never has. She was harder on Gryffindors than other Houses because she didn't want us to embarrass her.

"And another thing, Malfoy." Harry leaned forwards. Malfoy's mouth was hanging open, and this might be Harry's best chance to say what he needed to without the prat interrupting all the time. "I hate the attention I get. I know, I know, _you'd _like it, and therefore I must, because you judge everyone by your narrow little standards that couldn't hold half the things I learned during the last year. But I don't want this attention. I didn't want to swear this oath. I didn't want to fight Voldemort. I didn't want to be the Boy-Who-Lived. If I had a choice, I'd like to grow up with my parents _alive, _thanks, and live a normal life, and only have Snape hating me, if anyone did. Even you wouldn't hate me, because you wouldn't have cared about getting in good with the Chosen One and you wouldn't be hurt when you realized I wouldn't let you manipulate me. Besides, why do you care why Matthieson was expelled, as long as it benefits you? So take your suggestions about loving the attention and _sod off_."

He stopped, panting. Malfoy looked at him with eyes as big as moons. Harry had the impression that, for once, he had managed to surprise him.

Then Malfoy muttered, "I said that you'd never understand. But perhaps you would, if I explained."

Harry rolled his eyes and flopped back down on his pillow. "I don't care about your explanations," he said tiredly. "I don't care about you. Go away."

Malfoy wrapped an arm around his stomach, for some reason, as though something hurt there. But his voice was steady when it came out, which only proved that the gesture had nothing to do with Harry. Perhaps he had indigestion from eating his pride all day long. Harry hoped so. "Slughorn told us about your offer of a defense class. Was that genuine?"

"Yes." Harry rubbed his eyes. He was absurdly tired. He wasn't kidding about wanting Malfoy to go away, either. "I'll teach you what I taught Dumbledore's Army, so that you can at least defend yourselves. Just keep in mind that using what I teach you on other students preemptively could get you expelled like Matthieson."

"And you're doing this because it would make it easier for you to defend us?" Malfoy spoke as if he was edging out over an abyss and the breath of one little word would be sufficient to tip him over.

"Of course," Harry said. "Why else would I be doing it?"

"I know why I would _hope _you're doing it." Malfoy's voice was even more tentative now. "Should I tell you?"

Harry stared at him. "How many invitations do you need to fuck off before you take me seriously?"

"Shut up, Potter, I'm having a Gryffindor moment," Malfoy said, and the shock of that was enough to make Harry sit with his mouth hanging open, so that Malfoy could rush ahead. "I'd hope that you were doing it because you had some compassion for what we suffered last year. I'd hope that you were doing it because you were sorry for leaving Slytherins out of your little group in the first place. I'd hope that you were doing it because you know that not all of us are the same, and you can't blame the first-years for what I might have done." He ended in a rush and went back to his arms-folded plus staring combination, which seemed to be his secret weapon to make Harry explode with frustration.

Harry rubbed his forehead. He was remembering how strongly he hadn't wanted to go into Slytherin as a first-year, and that was before the war happened. What about the kids who were Sorted this year, after the war, and maybe crying because they thought of themselves as evil?

"The first and the third reasons are true," he said at last. "Not the second. Need I remind you that the year I started Dumbledore's Army was the year that you and a lot of other Slytherins joined the _Inquisitors' _Squad, and thought it was funny when Umbridge tortured me?"

"Never funny," Malfoy said. "I cared too much about it for it to really amuse me."

Harry raised an eyebrow. "Let me guess. You wished you were the one holding the wand."

"Sometimes, yes," Malfoy said. "And what does that tell you, Potter?"

"Listen, Malfoy," Harry snapped, "I also don't care about your perverted fantasies about orgasming to the sound of someone else's screams under the Cruciatus."

Malfoy cocked his head to the side and stared at him in owl-eyed silence. Harry looked back, and then they mutually decided to pretend that that statement had never happened.

"I wanted you to pay attention to me," Malfoy said. "Perhaps it was impossible for you to put me into Dumbledore's Army at the time, but you could have spared a few more nods and glances for me than you did."

"You were a _git_," Harry said. "And you weren't being bulled then, either. What would have made me pay attention to you?"

"The same decency that made you swear the oath this year." Malfoy paused again, as though whoever was telepathically feeding him sane thoughts had had a coughing fit. "Or is that decency something you only developed after the war?"

Harry shrugged. He didn't want to talk about what his and Malfoy's relationship had been like in the past. It would only bring up uncomfortable thoughts. "Will you encourage the others to become part of this group, then? Because I think many of them are too stubborn or afraid to do it."

Malfoy nodded. "And I'll be the first one there."

"Wait, wait a minute," Harry said, wondering both why Malfoy thought he'd be included and how he could have promised a Defense group for the Slytherins and _not _thought Malfoy would be involved. This was probably the fault of him and his stupidity more than it was Malfoy's, Harry admitted glumly to himself. "Who—I mean, what can you possibly have to learn from me?"

The grin that overtook Malfoy's face then was completely unexpected, not least because Harry hadn't known he knew how to do that.

"Bravery," Malfoy said. "Compassion. And yes, how to do things like cast a Patronus and use the Shield Charm correctly. Mine still fails me two times out of three."

Harry looked at him and waited for the ridiculousness of that idea to penetrate his thick skull. But Malfoy carried on looking helpful and alert, and Harry decided that he would just take advantage of whatever transient good mood Malfoy was in and hope that it still endured tomorrow evening.

"Be on time," he said. "And if anyone disrupts anything or attacks me deliberately, then out they go. I'm not going to put up with people trying to get revenge on _me _when I'm trying to protect their arses."

"Most of them are coming around to Slughorn's point-of-view now," Malfoy said calmly. "That your presence is useful and can help us win back a good reputation, or at least the ability to survive in the school on a day-to-day basis."

"Er," Harry said, unsure how Malfoy could go from being personal and open to sounding sensible and detached so quickly. On the other hand, nothing about what Malfoy had said this evening made sense anyway, so at least this change fit right in with everything else. "All right. If anyone else shows up at the door, I'll kick them out, but I'll probably bring in a few of the Gryffindors who were in the Army so that they can help you demonstrate the spells."

"Why?" Malfoy was himself again in a minute, bristling and looking as if he'd like to blast Harry's head off for a simple suggestion. Harry was relieved. His life already had a sufficient quota of oddness, thank you.

"Because I can't do everything myself," Harry said patiently. "And because I don't know how many of you are going to show up. You'll learn faster if there's a large group and I'm not trying to work personally with everyone there."

Malfoy nodded and spun away on one heel, then paused near the doorway of the hospital wing to add over his shoulder, "Don't bring anyone who's bullied us in the past few weeks."

"D'you think I'm stupid?" Harry asked indignantly, and realized a moment later the perfection of that straight line.

In the end, it seemed it was too perfect for Malfoy to take advantage of. He simply looked back over his shoulder, waited to make sure Harry absorbed what he _could_ have said but didn't, and then left.

Harry flopped back down again and frowned at the ceiling. So Matthieson was expelled and the Slytherins would probably come to this Defense group, but he would have to try to convince Ron, Hermione, Ginny, and Neville to come with him and behave nicely, and then he would have to mediate back and forth between a roomful of paranoid Slytherins and suspicious Gryffindors.

Maybe the disappearance of just a few obligations from his overcrowded life was all that he could hope for, though.

He let himself drift off, because the question of why Malfoy had revealed those personal details, had _smiled _at him, and wanted to participate in the group at all wasn't pressing enough to keep him awake.

He was curious about it, though, all the same.


	4. Totally SelfDefense

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Four—Totally Self-Defense_

Harry strode down the middle of the corridor, noticing the way that students, especially Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff students, avoided him. It was the morning after he had got out of the hospital wing, he was on his way to class, and most of the school was finally taking his promise to protect Slytherins seriously.

He hated to admit it, but some tiny part of his soul was gratified by the lowered eyes and quickly gulped breaths and the speed with which they moved away.

Which made it all the more surprising when someone stepped into his path and refused to move.

Harry paused to study the intruder. A tall young woman in Ravenclaw robes; he looked automatically for the prefect's badge on her shoulder but didn't see it. Harry sighed in relief. It was good to know that McGonagall's judgment wasn't so horrible that she chose _all _the stupid people as prefects. They should be left to fill other niches in the school, too.

"Move," Harry said, baring his teeth a little as he met her blue eyes. Deep, clear blue, not that that made a difference. Harry would be just as happy to bounce her on her head no matter what the color of her eyes was.

The girl folded her arms and gave him a flat look. "No," she said. "Not when you've intruded on our rights."

"What rights are those?" Harry looked up at the ceiling. Perhaps the rights were written there. It would be convenient if they were, since he spent so much time rolling his eyes these days. "The right to torture Slytherins?"

"The right to enact justice on those who managed to escape it because of the Ministry's mistaken ideas about them being too young." The girl leaned forwards as if she assumed that that would intimidate him into agreeing with her. Harry watched, counting silently under his breath, and sure enough, he hadn't reached four before she folded her arms. _I really must find out who's in this club spreading mistaken information about me being scared of that and get them to stop._ "The right to avenge what we suffered under the Death Eaters."

"Ah," Harry said. "So you just admitted that you'd been one of the bullies. Thank you. That cuts down on my search. _Caligo!_"

The girl still had her mouth open when Harry's spell struck her. She promptly began to spin in place, faster and faster, as if she was a ballerina that someone had forced to twirl on her toes. Harry saw her hands flailing as she tried to find her wand and stop the spell, but it was useless. She would be far too busy to concentrate on anything but the movement of her body.

And the increasing dizziness that would be slowly taking over her head and senses. Harry's intent with the spell, at least this time, wasn't really to hurt. He had tried pain during the night he got no sleep, and all it really seemed to do was discourage _those _particular people.

He wanted to see what humiliation could do.

The spell ended when Harry judged that it should, which was long before the fascination of anyone watching was exhausted. They had drawn a crowd, which Harry had anticipated and counted on. The punishment wasn't worth anything if other people didn't see it and thus decide to stop being stupid.

The girl staggered out of the spin and spent a few moments clawing at the air with her hands, as though she thought a wall would appear out of thin air to help her. Then she lurched sideways and fell. Harry smiled brightly. Thanks to being the victim of that spell himself when Ron was practicing it this summer, he knew the dizziness was much worse from it than any ordinary spinning around.

"A bit difficult to stand, isn't it?" he asked.

She glared at him and tried to respond, but it was only too obvious that her eyes wouldn't focus. This time, when she tried to get up, she slumped back and vomited on the floor. There were guilty giggles from every direction.

"Along with your many other rights is the one to suffer whatever I must do to you in fulfillment of my oath," Harry said solemnly, and marched past her. He could hear Hermione and Ron struggling to catch up with him; they had lagged behind so they could snog, which Harry normally didn't mind, and especially not today, since it meant that Hermione hadn't tried to interfere in what he was doing.

She did, of course, try to scold him when it was too late. "_Harry_," she said reproachfully, gasping for breath. Harry knew her lips would be swollen if he looked back. He didn't look back. "The Dizziness Charm could really have hurt her."

"She was arguing for other people to be hurt," Harry said. They had reached the door of the Potions classroom and there was no sign of Slughorn yet, so he spun around and pinned Hermione with a sharp gaze before she could escape, forcing himself to ignore her lips. "Can you really support that? Can you really excuse all the shite that the Slytherins are suffering through because you don't like them?"

They also had an audience, he saw, a fact which caused Hermione to give him an accusing glare, but Harry didn't mind. He had started to accept the fact that most of his life would be lived in public. As long as he could have privacy when he absolutely needed it—and a lot of the spells he'd practiced during the summer had been Silencing Charms and wards—then he could put up with the rest.

He might _hate _it, but he could put up with it, the same way he could put up with people folding their arms at him. In fact, he might try that himself in a moment, since Hermione also seemed to think it was effective.

"No," Hermione said. "I don't think it's right. But if you try to prevent it, then they might try something worse to get their revenge."

"They were tormenting a Slytherin girl the other night who would have been _eleven _when the Death Eaters were here," Harry said. "Terry and Michael were trying to make her fall down the stairs. What possible crime could she have committed that would make that right?"

Hermione put one hand to her mouth and looked briefly as if she would be sick. Ron grimaced, but then put one hand on Hermione's shoulder and scowled at Harry. He didn't look as if he knew whose side he should be on, so Harry addressed his next words as much to him as to Hermione.

"Why is it _right _to torture people who tortured you, if you think torture is always wrong?" He turned his head, and the students who had been lingering nearby and listening in silence surged away as if he could shoot lightning bolts out of his eyes. Harry made a mental note to practice that curse, which he had never got right, some more. "You acknowledge that they were doing what they did to survive, but you still think it's wrong. Well, then, what you're doing is more so, since you don't have someone standing over you and ordering you to do it."

"Slytherins bullied us for years!" called someone who obviously thought he was safely hidden near the back of the little crowd. "And you never did anything about it."

"That was a free environment," Harry said. "Bullying for all!" A few people laughed, and then looked as if they wondered whether they should have. "But the war changes things. And if you think it doesn't, then you're stupid and I'll probably be seeing you next." He faced his best friends. "What do you say? Will you come with me tonight and make a stand?"

He had already told them about the Slytherin self-defense group, though they hadn't yet agreed to be teachers. Now Ron and Hermione traded agonized stares, and Hermione tugged at her hair as if it would come out of her head and give her something else to think about.

"Well?" Harry made his voice and his gaze both sharper. Yes, he could do this without them, but really, they'd stood on the sidelines long enough. Harry hated the oath, but intervening in the bullying was the right thing to do.

"I'm in," Ron said, unexpectedly. Harry had thought Hermione would give in first and join him in persuading Ron around.

"I—yes, so am I," Hermione said, with a firm little nod.

Harry smiled. Hermione often second-guessed her decisions before she actually made them, but was unchanging once she did. "Good."

He turned around, only to see someone charging at him with a raised wand and a determined expression. Hermione gasped and Ron cried out, but Harry's wand was already up and he'd cast without thinking about it.

The spell grabbed the attacker—someone tall and wearing a Gryffindor tie, was all Harry had time to see—and bounced him quite conclusively off the walls, around at different angles, into the Potions classroom door, and then down the corridor, depositing him in a moaning heap at Slughorn's feet.

Slughorn stared at the crumpled student, and then up at Harry. Harry shrugged.

"Self-defense, sir," he said. "Completely."

* * *

Harry hesitated and took a deep breath before he rounded the corner towards the Room of Requirement. He had to admit that he was nervous about whether there would be Slytherins there after all, even though Malfoy had promised there would be and he had his best friends behind him. Things would be so much _easier _if the Slytherins would just cooperate a bit in their own safety instead of leaving it all up to him.

Ron poked him in the back. "Well, go on," he whispered.

Harry smiled at him briefly and then straightened his shoulders and walked around the corner. Behind him came Ron, Hermione, Ginny, and Neville. Neville had proven harder to persuade than some of the others—he'd lived with the horrors of last year for a longer time than any of the rest of them had—and he still clutched both his wand and a dark scowl as if he thought that the ghosts of Death Eaters would come out of the wall. But he had agreed to come, and Harry trusted him to use the spells the way they were meant to be used. Neville had grown a lot since sixth year.

There was a cluster of twenty-five or thirty Slytherins in the corridor, with a ring of older students around the smaller ones, keeping watch. Malfoy was the one closest to Harry, and he gave him a cool nod while showing that he had a grip on his wand.

"Potter," he said. "Show us the entrance to this room."

"This place is known as the Room of Requirement," Harry said loudly, partially so that all the Slytherins and not just Malfoy would have the information and partially to show that he didn't do what Malfoy asked the minute he asked it. "It doesn't technically exist until you walk back and forth in front of the door three times and think about the place you want to reach."

There was an excited murmuring from some of the younger children, and Harry smiled. It was good to hear them interested in what was going on, rather than frightened. He did notice the girl he had rescued the other night, whose last name was Kane, among those waiting, and gave her an especially big smile. She gulped, but didn't look away.

"We need a training room," Harry said. "And somewhere that only the ones of us here now will be welcome." He turned away and started concentrating on the wall, though he didn't know what he should ask for beyond the things he'd just stated, awkwardly phrased as they were.

"Wait, Potter," Malfoy said, with a majestic sneer he must have spent the hours on that he didn't spend practicing glaring. "We have to have more than that. There's some of our Housemates who didn't feel like joining us this time, but may in the future, depending on how well this goes. They have to be able to get into the room as well, and they can't if you lock it."

Harry gritted his teeth. "I wouldn't be _locking _it, thanks, Malfoy," he muttered.

"You're welcome," Malfoy said, and Harry knew the expression that would be on his face without glancing at him. "For the observation and the terminology."

Harry began to walk up and down in front of the wall again, not trusting himself to respond. _A place where all the Slytherins and the Gryffindors who are here can be safe, _he thought to the Room of Requirement. _A place that only we can find. A place to train._

He wondered if the request would be too complicated for the room, but a low wooden door with silver handle and bolts formed after three passes back and forth. Harry exhaled in relief and reached out to take the handle. A small spark formed under his fingers, worrying him for a second, but it seemed that that was the Room's method to recognize him as one of those permitted inside it. It was gone almost as soon as it appeared, and the door clicked open.

Harry stepped in, and blinked. The room was _impressive, _in a way he hadn't really envisioned it being when he made his request. Maybe it needed to be, to ensure that the Slytherins weren't constantly complaining about being in a place that was inferior to their tastes and needs.

The floor was an alternating pattern of dark, gleaming wood and soft, cushioned spaces where someone could fall after a spell, or recover. The walls were curving, covered with rich dark green fabric that meant Harry couldn't see what they were actually made of. They would be useful to bounce away from, at least. The ceiling had bright windows in it that beamed down just enough light to make the room not oppressive. There were alcoves, small free-standing walls, and baskets of what looked like artificial obstacles: stones, chair legs, buckets of sand. Harry nodded. They needed to learn how to work with the landscape and battle on artificial terrain, too.

The Slytherins hushed as they filed in, and then started gossiping again, more loudly than before. Malfoy cast a sideways glance at Harry and coupled it with a faint smile.

"I wouldn't have thought you had this much imagination," he murmured. "Not after other proofs I've received about the inability of your mind to comprehend anything unfamiliar."

Harry scowled at him and motioned the Gryffindors to fall back behind him. The Slytherins fell behind Malfoy in the same natural way. They were left facing each other across an open expanse of floor.

Harry shook his head. That wasn't how it should work. He had meant to keep a separation between teachers and students, but it worked out as separation between the Houses, which would only enforce what they were trying to get rid of. "All right," he said. "How many are there of you, exactly?"

"Thirty," Malfoy said. He didn't look around, which meant he had counted them beforehand. Something about his tone—cool and non-confrontational though it was—made Harry want to draw his wand and hit him over the head with it.

"There's five of us," Harry said. "So, six students for each of us."

"Amazing," Malfoy said, touching his chest with one hand as if his heart had fluttered. "You can do maths."

"Oh, wait," Harry said. "I forgot. There's thirty-one of you, counting Malfoy's enormous ego. Well, I reckon I can handle seven students. Come here, Malfoy."

Smothered snickers broke out from the Slytherins, while Malfoy's face went pink. He moved slowly towards Harry, trailed by several of the older students. Harry was surprised to see Parkinson among them. He had surmised she would rather work with any of the others than with the Gryffindor who'd saved her life.

With a shrug, and only one glance to see that the Slytherins were drifting towards his friends, he faced Malfoy again. Behind him were Parkinson, Zabini, two nervous-looking sixth-year girls whom Harry didn't know but who looked like twins, and a thin, apparently half-starved boy who watched Harry avidly.

"Right," Harry said. He told himself being watched this way by Slytherins was really no different than being watched that way by students of other Houses, whom he had managed to teach just fine in Dumbledore's Army. "I wanted to ask you what you would rather learn first, the Shield Charm or the Patronus Charm. The Shield Charm will help keep you safe from immediate danger, but the Patronus Charm can allow you to summon help."

"I never heard of that," Parkinson said, as if her never hearing of something meant the thing shouldn't exist.

"And I'd never heard of professors neglecting their duties enough to ignore you being bullied, but that's the way it is," Harry snapped back at her. "We learn new things all the time."

For some reason, that made Parkinson go still and look at him thoughtfully. Then a faint smile flitted across her lips, and she nodded. That wasn't the reaction Harry expected either, but since Parkinson failed to answer the question, he shrugged and glanced at the others.

"The Patronus Charm," Malfoy said quietly. "We're stronger in numbers, and some of us already know how to do the Shield Charm."

"All right," Harry said. "It's difficult, so don't be worried if you don't make it work at first. You have to think of your happiest memory and keep focused on that as you cast the spell." He drew back his wand and shot it forwards as he thought of the moment when he'd come back to life after defeating Voldemort, and realized he was really _alive _again, and had a chance. "_Expecto Patronum!_"

The air blurred, and then the silver stag charged out of his wand and bounded around the room in a frenzy, leaping the little walls and knocking at the alcoves with its antlers. Harry smiled as he watched it. If any of the Slytherins could do something half as good today, he would be surprised, but that wasn't the point. He just liked seeing his Patronus.

He turned around and surveyed the Slytherins, only to find that his students were watching him with open mouths and wide eyes, as though they had heard about this but never expected to see a demonstration.

Except Malfoy—who was the only one, Harry realized belatedly, who would have seen this before, although it was when the stag had charged him down on the Quidditch Pitch while he was dressed up as a Dementor.

_His _eyes were half-lidded, his mouth twisted into a sneer, his fingers tight around his wand.

Harry blinked and then turned around, uncomfortable. Of course Malfoy would be furious that Harry could do something he couldn't—yet—but there was something more in that look that wasn't anger or jealousy.

It tried to make a name for itself in his mind, but Harry put a stop to that quickly. No thoughts of Malfoy were getting out of control in _his _head, thank you.

"Anyway," he said, as the silver stag came to a stop in front of him, pawed the ground, and bowed to him before vanishing, "that's how you cast it. It's used mainly to stop Dementors, of course, and you should summon your Patronus if you ever face one. But they can also carry messages. You'll need to focus on the person you want to send it to and the message itself if you ever need to cast one, and then the Patronus will run to that person and speak in your voice."

"Can it come back, carrying another message?" Zabini was the one who asked that, one eyebrow rising as if he were considering a chess problem. Then Harry told himself not to be stupid. _Ron _looked like that when he was considering a chess problem, but Harry didn't even know if Zabini played chess.

"No," Harry said. "You're the only one who can cast or affect your Patronus, so it'll fade after it delivers the information. But the person you sent it to can cast their own Patronus and send it back with a return message, at least if they know how to cast one."

Malfoy stood up a little straighter and looked around at the nearest Slytherin students—the ones behind him and the fifth- and fourth-years clustered in front of Ron. They glanced at him instinctively. Harry blinked. He had seen Malfoy exert that level of control in the Slytherin car during the train ride before sixth year, but he hadn't thought he would still have it after the war.

"Listen up," Malfoy said. "I want everyone to learn how to cast the Patronus Charm, as soon as they can."

His voice wasn't loud, and wasn't harshly inflected. That didn't matter, Harry thought. Every single one of the students listening would know he meant it, and they would do their best to obey.

Harry wondered for a moment what it would have been like if he'd had that level of control over Gryffindor House.

Then he recoiled, even as he snorted at himself. Yes, it would have made some things easier—for example, it might have meant no Gryffindors joined in tormenting the Slytherins this year—but on the other hand, he'd have to have lots more responsibility than he wanted, and he'd have to be in charge of people's lives. He didn't want to.

Malfoy was looking at him curiously. Harry met his eyes and said, "You should know that most of the students third year and younger won't be able to cast this. I managed it in my third year, but only after lots of practice."

"Why?" Malfoy murmured, twisting his head like an owl.

"None of your business," Harry said, though he tried not to make it too harsh. "Anyway, it would make things a lot easier if the people who can't cast it would walk with someone who could. And if you lot would _stop going out _of your common room at night."

Malfoy only raised his eyebrows, which admittedly wasn't the reaction Harry had expected from him. "We do that because some of your precious Gryffindors, as well as Hufflepuffs, barricade the library during the day," he said calmly. "Sneaking in after hours is really the only way to get our work done."

"What?" Harry snarled. The sound once again made people pause in their training to look over at him. Harry took a deep breath, glad of the outrage that powered it, and repeated, "What?" in a lower tone.

Malfoy sneered this time. "Doubting the source won't make it less true, Potter."

"I don't—fuck," Harry said, and ignored the way Parkinson's mouth hung open at that. What, she hadn't thought he could swear? Well, she was here to get an education in all sorts of things, so that might as well be one of them. "I didn't know this was happening. And the Ravenclaws aren't joining in because they care too much about learning to block your way?"

Malfoy clapped like a seal. "Very good, Potter! Now we only need to make you pay attention to ninety-_eight _percent of the things happening around you, instead of ninety-nine."

"Shut up," Harry mumbled, but he was too busy thinking about what he should do next to put any heat behind it. When he noticed that his students simply stood there staring at him, he waved an irritated hand. "Well? Start practicing. The incantation is _Expecto Patronum_, and you gesture forwards as if throwing something from you. Remember to think about your happiest memory."

They spread out, Zabini and Parkinson facing each other, the twins and the thin boy working together. Harry began to pace back and forth, frowning.

Maybe there was some substance to Malfoy's complaints about how he never noticed anything, because it took him two minutes to realize Malfoy was pacing beside him, watching his face.

"Listen," Harry said. "I'm trying to think of a way to break that barricade on the library, and in such a way that they'll never do anything like that again. You can't help me. Go practice your Patronus."

Malfoy gave him a small, smug smile. "I can already do it. Not as well as you can, but I got plenty of practice, last year, with Dementors—around the house."

Abruptly his smile faded, and his eyes were haunted. Harry wanted to accuse him of lying, as well as of idiocy because he'd never thought to teach his Housemates the Patronus Charm himself, but that expression stopped him. He hesitated, then laid his hand on Malfoy's arm.

"All right," he said. "Then help me out tomorrow evening. We're going to break the blockade when they least expect it."

Malfoy shook his head. "If you want a large audience to see what happens to them, you shouldn't wait until the evening. Everyone will be heading to the Great Hall by then."

Harry shook his head back. "This time, I don't want everyone to see. Rumor is going to be our friend, and multiple stories about what happened, each worse than the last." He smiled at Malfoy, and didn't really care that it made Malfoy look at him as if he were a crazed maniac. "And even better, it'll make use of that Potions skill you love to brag about. Still want to help?"

"Yes," Malfoy said, so strong and immediate that Harry gave him a normal smile despite himself. "But I doubt I have any of the potions you'll need on hand. Can we wait until Thursday evening? That'll give me time to get the brewing done."

"If we do that, then we'll need to arrange a schedule for protecting the younger ones in the meantime," Harry said. "As well as anyone who can't do the Patronus."

"I trust you," Malfoy said.

Those words had no reason to make him warm inside, Harry thought. Stupid words.

To get his mind off the stupid words, he told Malfoy his plan.

Among the sights that made the Room of Requirement strange that evening, Harry thought later, must have been the sight of Malfoy laughing at Harry's words, not in scorn but in approval, while all around them the silvery wisps of Patronus Charms formed and Slytherins and Gryffindors, staring each other warily in the face, worked together.


	5. Why You Should Not Barricade the Library

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Five—Why You Should Not Barricade the Hogwarts Library_

"Oh, and Portman helped in it, too," Hermione said, with a slightly brightening expression because she remembered someone else's name, just before she slumped into gloom again. "Harry, do you really _have _to do this? I know that they were wrong, and they should be punished, but by teachers, not other students."

Harry ignored her and wrote down Portman's name. Now that he thought about it, he remembered him—Gerald Portman, a quiet Gryffindor fifth-year who had always seemed like an escapee from Ravenclaw. It didn't make much sense that he would block the library and stop other people from studying.

But then, nothing about the bullying or the other parts of the end of the war made sense, Harry reminded himself, and stifled a yawn. "Is that all the names you can remember?" He looked over at Ron, who sat on the couch beside Hermione and watched Harry as if he thought he'd grow a new nose or swear a new oath any second.

"Yes," Ron said. "Mate, are you sure you want to do this?"

"I see," Harry said, with a slight nod. "Instead of finishing each other's sentences like a normal couple, you just reword each other's questions."

Hermione smiled in spite of herself. "We wouldn't ask if it wasn't important, Harry."

"Even if I didn't want to, the oath would make me do it," Harry pointed out, and the inevitability of that shut Hermione up, the way inevitability tended to do. Harry could imagine her having a philosophical discussion with gravity about its nature as she fell from a tower and accepting gravity's opinion at the end. "I'm not going to kill them or even humiliate them that much. I just want to spread fear and terror throughout the school until people leave the Slytherins alone."

"I wish there was a way to satisfy everyone's emotions without hurting people," Hermione said wistfully, playing with the edge of the red-and-gold blanket sprawled across her lap. "I know that it's wrong, what they've done, but their frustration and resentment against the Slytherins isn't simply going to disappear. If you prevent them from taking it out one way, it'll have to come out another."

"I don't care if they take up basket-weaving or Muggle sports, just so long as they don't bounce the balls off Slytherin heads," Harry retorted, and stood up. "I'm for bed."

Ron nodded, and then turned to snog Hermione. Harry rolled his eyes as he walked up the stairs. There were other people in the Gryffindor common room, everyone in the immediate universe knew that Ron and Hermione were a couple by now, and yet they acted as if they couldn't kiss when he was there.

Harry wondered idly, as he undressed for bed, whether he envied them, and then decided that he didn't really. From outside, what his best friends had looked ideal, warm and comfortable, and they _did _bicker less than they had. But Harry didn't think he could stand someone who was that close all the time, or someone who scolded the way Hermione did, or someone who asked endless protective questions the way Ron did.

_I could use someone to fight with, _he thought as he closed his eyes. _Except that that's the kind of thing you can't do too much of, or you lose the other person. So I don't know how to solve the difficulty._

He tossed off before he went to bed, because he thought it would help him relax and deal with the summons out of bed some tone-deaf student was going to give him. As always, the fantasies in his head were faceless, and Harry snorted in amusement as he cast his Cleaning Charm.

_If I'm going to look for someone to date, it would help if I actually had a preference as to what they looked like._

* * *

"You're in a cheerful mood this morning," Malfoy commented, without looking away from the cauldron hovering above the conjured fire.

Harry closed the door behind him without answering and looked around. Malfoy had insisted on meeting in Snape's private rooms, though right now they didn't look much like Harry remembered; the walls had been stripped of everything but shelves, and the only furniture was the table and the chairs that Malfoy had brought with him. The fireplace was filled with long-dead ashes. Harry felt a shiver move up his spine anyway as he walked towards Malfoy. "You can't know that," he pointed out. "You haven't looked at me yet."

"Tricky potion," Malfoy explained, dipping a ladle into a jar of what looked like blood on the table and dumping it into the potion. Harry blinked with astonishment at getting an _explanation_, and then Malfoy glanced at him and nodded. "Besides, I was right. When you have that stupid grin on your face, your voice sounds even stupider than usual."

"I reckon you must be the expert on the voices of dim-witted people," Harry retorted, and stepped to the side so that he could see into the cauldron. It didn't look very interesting right now, like purple medicine with green leaves in it. "What's that going to do?"

"Nothing at the moment, except perhaps make you swell up like a blowfish." Malfoy stepped back and cocked his head. Harry followed his line of sight, but all he could see was the side of the cauldron. Perhaps Malfoy could see through steel, Harry thought. That must be exciting for him. "But when I'm done with it, tomorrow, then we'll have a potion that can affect non-material entities, exactly as you asked for."

Harry smirked despite himself, and Malfoy glanced up in time to catch the smirk and return it with one of his own. Harry relaxed. On the one hand, he liked a Malfoy he could plot and plan with better than one he had to watch his back around all the time (for relative values of _like_). On the other, a Malfoy who smiled constantly the way he'd seemed to do yesterday was weird.

"And the other potions?" he asked.

Malfoy waved a hand behind him. Harry turned and saw the vials lined up along the table, one green, one blue, two red.

"That first one there enhances emotions," Malfoy said. "The blue one helps make those emotions contagious, in effect giving everyone in a limited area a small amount of both telepathy and sympathetic magic. The red ones will, respectively, tell us what their worst nightmares are and suspend their disbelief, convincing them more easily that those worst nightmares are coming true."

"Wait." Harry folded his arms and frowned at Malfoy. "We have to drink one of those? I thought the potions were only for our victims."

Malfoy gave him a sharp look from the corner of one eye. "What's the matter, Potter?" he asked softly. "Don't you trust me?"

Harry frowned and examined him. A smile would have told him how he was supposed to react. Instead, Malfoy seemed to be serious and joking at the same time, which meant he wanted the situation both ways, which was unfair.

Still, Harry knew that treating things _completely _seriously would make Malfoy mock him, so he rolled his eyes and said, "It's one thing to trust you to help me in an effort to confuse and bewilder other students, and another thing to trust you not to give me the exploding shits because I swallowed a potion you brewed."

Malfoy blinked, and for a moment his face relaxed into an expression of pure confusion. Harry earnestly examined the cauldron so that he could hide his smile. _Good. Welcome to my state of mind since I made that stupid oath._

"I see," Malfoy said. "Well, if you wish, only I need take that potion, and then I can tell you what the nightmares of the others are." He paused, then added, "How many students are we going to be dealing with?"

"I've got fifteen names," Harry said, patting the list in his pocket and hearing the parchment crinkle. "And we'll both take the potion, at the same time. If only to make sure that you aren't cheating."

Malfoy released his breath in a long noise that made his lips flutter. Harry ducked the rain of spit he was sure was about to commence, and peered out suspiciously from behind the cauldron when he realized it hadn't happened—yet.

"I don't understand you," Malfoy said. "Cheating?"

"If I didn't take some kind of precaution, then you would sneer at me and hint darkly that I _should_," Harry said. "And if I didn't take the potion at all, then Merlin knows what would happen. I'm just learning to think like a Slytherin, you see. It saves time in the long run."

"What would _you_ know about thinking like a Slytherin?" Malfoy suddenly seized what looked like a scrap of onion from the table and dropped it into the potion. The bubbles that had been creeping towards the rim of the cauldron retreated again, and Malfoy sighed, shaking his head and wiping a bead of sweat from his brow.

Harry thought about saying something about the near miss, but then again, he didn't want to have to wait several days more for the potion to brew because Malfoy had dumped the whole cauldron over his head. "I'd know a bit about it," he said. "The Sorting Hat wanted to put me in Slytherin."

Malfoy's hand jerked to the side, spraying a whole cluster of red flower petals on the floor and the table. Harry snickered and flicked his wand, picking up the petals and guiding them to hover above the potion. His only regret about his confession was that he hadn't managed to do it when Malfoy was drinking something. "Do these need to go in all at once, or clumped, or scattered across the surface, or what?" he asked.

"Scattered across the surface," Malfoy said. He was staring at Harry, and his face was white, his lips clamped so hard that Harry thought they'd rupture in a minute. "You _can't _have been considered for Slytherin."

"Well, I was," said Harry, and swirled his wand so that the petals would spread out in the pattern Malfoy had dictated. "It wasn't my idea, you understand. The Sorting Hat said I could be great there, and I begged it to put me anywhere else. I didn't ask specifically for Gryffindor, because at that point I didn't know much about it. But Gryffindor was the second choice, so that was where I went." He shrugged elaborately with one shoulder and then turned to check on Malfoy.

Malfoy was leaning back against the table, clutching it with both hands. "Why did you decide not to go into Slytherin?" he demanded.

Harry swallowed, unexpectedly uncomfortable. He'd brought up the fact to tease Malfoy and to indicate that it might not be _impossible _for him to be as "brilliant" as a Slytherin. But he'd forgotten the other thing he'd have to admit.

On the other hand, why should he be so uncomfortable? Of course the past had an impact on the present, or he would have helped the Slytherins a great deal more willingly than he had so far.

"You," he said. "The way you teased Ron and bragged about Slytherin put me right off it. Partially because you reminded me of my cousin," he added, out of a sense of fairness.

Malfoy's mouth relaxed, but from a tight pout into a disgusted sneer. "I see," he said, and turned his head to the side as if he wanted Harry to admire his profile. _That was wasted effort, _Harry thought, and leaned over to make sure the last of the flower petals were in the potion. "Even then, you made your decisions because of me."

Harry snapped his head up and whirled around. Of _course _that was the interpretation the git would put on it, but Harry wasn't going to allow him to go on thinking it. "That's not it! I told you, you reminded me of my cousin. You might just as well say that I made my decision because of him." Then Harry realized how that sounded and trailed off, frowning fiercely.

Malfoy glanced back at him. The whiteness had somewhat faded from his face, and he liked whatever he saw in Harry's expression, from the way his eyes shone. "You say that," he said, "but since when do you let anyone who isn't Dumbledore have that much influence over you, Potter?"

The tone dug holes in Harry's self-control, the way it always had, and he replied before he thought about it. "_You _deal with someone who bullies you and beats you up every day for no reason, and see how you defer to him! I didn't see you leaping to your feet to fight Matthieson off, did I?"

Then he heard his own words, and could have slapped his own head far worse than Hermione or Snape would ever have done.

_Shit._

He waited a minute, apprehensively, for the taunting to begin. Malfoy would ask questions. He would say that Harry was worth nothing for letting a Muggle beat him up. He would pry for more details about Dudley so that he could compare himself to him in other people's hearing.

But he didn't say anything. Harry finally looked up, one hand on his wand, ready to cast a Memory Charm if he could get away with it.

Malfoy was sorting among his ingredients again, moving the vials out of the way with a delicate frown. He picked up a crumpled leaf, studied it, and then put it down again.

"I see," he said, without looking up. "Much is now explained."

"_Oh_, no," Harry said, and aimed his wand. Malfoy regarded it it if as it was a difficult Arithmancy equation. "Listen, Malfoy, you're not going to use this revelation to—to bond with me, or anything like that."

"What a revolting suggestion, Potter," Malfoy said, looking honestly disgusted. "Of course not. But I wanted an explanation for why you appeared to take the bullying of Slytherins so personally, and now I have one. That's all." He lifted one shoulder in a casual shrug and then seemed to find the right crumpled leaf, since he dropped it into the potion with a snappy nod.

Harry watched him some more. Malfoy never acted like he was conscious of the scrutiny, instead doing mysterious things with feathers and more leaves and more petals and that red liquid Harry really hoped wasn't blood.

"I don't understand," Harry said finally.

"What do you need to understand?" Malfoy dried his hands on a towel and cast a charm that made a shimmering blue dome form over the cauldron. "There. That has to simmer for another day, and then I can cork it. We can use it at any time after that." He gave Harry a small glance. "Thursday, still?"

"Why you're not taking advantage of the knowledge I told you," Harry said. "Blackmailing me. Threatening to tell other people. Using it to make me give you Galleons or at least my broom. _Something."_

"You're not the only one who's changed in the past year," Malfoy said, adopting an injured expression that was ruined by the way he looked at Harry with a quivering lip.

"Like I believe _that_," Harry said. "You haven't changed towards me, at least. Tell me what you're going to use it for."

"Not going to use it," Malfoy said, with a lazy smile that Harry instinctively distrusted, the same way he would distrust a scorpion who had promised not to sting him. "If I use it, that diminishes the value." He turned around and strolled towards the door of Snape's rooms, hands in his robe pockets.

"Malfoy," Harry growled, following him.

Malfoy turned around so suddenly that Harry didn't have time to back away and found himself almost chest-to-chest with him. Malfoy looked into his eyes as though he was trying to hypnotize him. Harry folded his arms, then realized what he was doing and dropped them quickly back to his sides. If that gesture didn't intimidate him, he didn't think it would do much to Malfoy, either.

"The value is in keeping your secrets to myself," Malfoy murmured. "I like knowing things about you that no one else does." Then he paused and seemed to think. "Well, your friends might know about your cousin, but I don't think anyone else knows about Slytherin being the Hat's first choice for you, do they?"

"Dumbledore did," Harry said, wishing that he could wipe the smugness from Malfoy's face with his fist.

"I don't mind sharing my secrets with dead men." Malfoy flicked his eyes back to Snape's empty rooms, and then returned his gaze to Harry. "Or one living one, when that living one is you." He reached out and encircled Harry's wrist with two fingers.

Harry stood there and let him do it, which was the bizarre thing. Then he whipped his hand free and made a big show of wiping it on his trouser leg. He hoped that would make Malfoy wince the way that his words and gestures the other day had seemed to make him do.

Malfoy only offered him another smile and then departed. The further away he went, the more a chain or cord between them seemed to stretch. Harry carefully cast _Finite Incantatem _on every part of his body to make sure that the sensation wasn't real, and spent the rest of the day sulking through his classes.

He didn't understand, and he hated not understanding things that were about him.

* * *

"Not all of them are there," Malfoy breathed into Harry's ear, his voice ruffling the hair there. Harry moved his head aside in irritation and glanced down at the list in his hand, then at the vials in their soft satchel, slung over Malfoy's shoulder.

"I know," Harry said. "But most of them are, and that's all we need. The point is to create rumors that will terrify other people, after all, and leave everyone uncertain of _what _happened." He glanced around the corner again. Yes, several of the Gryffindors on his list and one Hufflepuff were sitting near the entrance of the library, either in the alcoves to either side of it or at the first tables. Harry had already seen the threatening stares they gave to the Slytherins who passed by, and that was enough to make his blood stir.

"We'll have to be careful that none of the chaos gets into the library if we can help it," Malfoy murmured. "I don't think Madam Pince would forgive us if that happened."

"Madam Pince can sod off," Harry muttered, picking up the red potions vial that Malfoy had said would give them the ability to see what their targets' worst nightmares were. "What did she ever do to prevent you lot from being treated like shite?"

"We're not books, Potter," Malfoy said. "Of course she doesn't care about us. And that's the wrong potion." He grabbed the red vial from Harry's hand and placed the other red vial into it instead.

Harry studied him with narrowed eyes. Malfoy smiled innocently back and then gestured to the library, as if to remind Harry that they didn't have all that much time before their targets would probably move.

Harry uncorked the vial. The potion inside stared up at him like a bloodshot eye. He grimaced and drank the half the vial Malfoy had told him to take.

His perceptions swung and swayed dizzily, and he felt as though he was standing up on his broom while hurtling through the air. He put out a hand, and Malfoy caught and held it. Harry tried not to feel bad about that while he sorted through his perceptions. In the meantime, Malfoy took the vial and swallowed the other half of the potion.

Harry looked up and focused on the images that he could see glowing like scarlet coronas or auras around the heads of the people in front of him.

The nearest boy, Portman, had a roaring nundu circling his shoulders like a scarf. Another girl had Dementors hovering above her, and there was one with a basilisk draped across his arm, and more than one had Voldemort. Harry smiled. He knew the smile was nasty. He didn't much care. All the nightmares were, as he had hoped they would be, solid things, so that he wouldn't have to deal with trying to conjure a vision of hunger or poverty or dying alone. He wasn't sure that his glamours, much as he'd been practicing, were good enough for that.

Of course, if Malfoy's other potions worked the way they were supposed to, that might not matter. And they would have something to build the glamours on, rather than putting them across the air itself.

"All right," he said out of the corner of his mouth. "What are we going to do about getting the potion into their systems?"

Malfoy picked up the other red potion, the one he had prevented Harry from drinking, and the green potion. Then he winked at Harry and laid them on the floor, chanting some long and complex incantation as he swirled his wand over them.

The liquids grew misty and slid out of the vials like vapor. Harry danced backwards nervously, but they never even came close to touching him. Instead, the fumes spun out, thinner and thinner, until there was no sign of them except a faint gleam here and there, and then danced around the corner in the direction of the library. Harry stuck his head out to watch again.

If he concentrated, he could see those fumes sliding into the nostrils of their targets, Portman and the girl who was afraid of Dementors and the others. A slightly cloudy expression came over their faces, but otherwise, the potions seemed to have no visible effect. Harry had asked Malfoy for ones like that; there was no point in having people panic _before _they saw their worst nightmares running around in front of them.

"That was bloody brilliant," he told Malfoy, not wanting to mince words. The git _blushed_, which Harry didn't expect, but he also couldn't see that it mattered. "The blue potion? When are we going to use it?"

"After this one." Malfoy held up the potion that Harry thought had been purple and green the other day. "Can't make their emotions contagious before they start feeling them."

"I knew that," Harry muttered, while Malfoy smirked at him, and then cocked his head at the purple potion. "So we need to use that after we call them?"

"Your attempts to act as though you know anything about potions are so _cute, _Potter," Malfoy murmured, and closed his eyes, forehead wrinkling. "_Expecto Patronum!_"

Harry called his at the same moment, and the silver stag stamped its hooves and whirled around, looking for the threat. When it could find none, it paused and turned its head to Harry as though asking why he had summoned it.

Harry couldn't answer it, though, since he was busy watching Malfoy's Patronus. An enormous silvery bird crouched on the floor in front of him, wings spread as though it wanted to shield Malfoy from the sight of anyone who might pass the corner. Its beak was hooked, its eyes disturbingly intelligent.

"What the fuck is that thing?" Harry whispered.

"A condor," Malfoy said. "The bird with the largest wingspan in the world except some albatrosses, and it can soar for hours on the currents and never tire." He looked at Harry's stag with a superior expression. "A good sight more elegant than your rutting beast, you have to admit."

"It figures that you would have a carrion-eater for your Patronus," Harry said, and ignored the scowl that took over Malfoy's face. "Use the potion."

Malfoy flicked the vial, and the purple-green potion dropped onto both their Patronuses. The condor looked resigned as it stretched its wings, and the stag startled, bobbing his antlers and snorting while he crossed his eyes. But the potion did what it was supposed to do, and made them both more solid, able to accept the glamours that Harry and Malfoy draped over them.

"I'll take the Dementors," Malfoy said. "I have a reason to know what they look like. You do Voldemort first."

Harry opened his mouth to object that they could just as well reverse their choices, and then remembered what Malfoy had said about Dementors hanging around the Manor. He nodded and cast a spell that made his stag waver and blur, and then straighten and grow that face he knew so well.

He hated doing it, in one way, as he hated to see Malfoy's elegant (yes, he could admit that) condor become a floating Dementor. But it was for a good cause, and when the Dementor and Voldemort came around the corner, more than one person screamed.

Malfoy was sending the blue potion into action now, and Harry saw it touch the ears and eyes and nostrils of more people than just the ones barricading the library. He didn't mind that. The whole point was to create a situation so intense and confusing that no one would really know what was going on, and all sorts of stories would emerge from it and run madly around the school. There would be people who guessed what had really happened, but Harry didn't think anyone would hit on the exact truth, given the complex combination of potions and Patronuses and illusions they'd chosen.

Screams spread from throat to throat as a Dementor and Voldemort apparently attacked, followed by a nundu that Malfoy conjured out of thin air. It wouldn't have been as convincing as the Patronuses, which had a solid base and moved in many different directions, a minute ago; all it did was stalk around in a mechanical circle and roar. The same problem applied to the basilisk that Harry created to follow the nundu. But with the panic in the air and spreading from person to person, that no longer mattered.

Portman ran into a wall trying to get away. The girl who was afraid of Dementors tossed a book at Malfoy's disguised condor, which made it hiss and fling back its "hood" to reveal the long mouth. She promptly ran off, howling fit to rival banshees all the way. Then two boys tried to climb a bookshelf, and Madam Pince stalked over, kicking them in the arse and yelling at them to be quiet, this was a _library!_

Two boys with Gryffindor ties knocked heads. The Hufflepuff girl, the only one in that particular crowd at this point, moaned and said, "I'll be a good girl, I promise, I will!" over and over, under the delusion that this would help. Harry's Voldemort cornered another Gryffindor student against his table and motioned with his wand at him, and the boy's eyes rolled up into his skull as he fainted.

Malfoy laughed and laughed, clutching his stomach. Harry watched with more of a hard satisfaction that the plan had succeeded, so that others were likely to stop bullying the Slytherins. Sure, this combination of spells and potions was affecting most of the people in the library, but they would realize what it meant that it had started with the students who had barricaded the library.

At least, Harry _hoped _they would. If it didn't work, he would just have to try something else. He absently rubbed the scar on his chest and then made himself stop.

Malfoy had said that the potions would last only ten minutes, and that was about as long as Harry felt comfortable keeping his Patronus active, so they slipped away after that and called their Patronuses back to them. Malfoy was staggering, holding his stomach and gasping and wheezing. Harry looked at him and shook his head. He didn't think that Malfoy was very attractive in his glee, but on the other hand, he knew how good it could feel to get back at the people who had hurt you. It was harder with the Dursleys now, especially since he hadn't seen them since the start of the war, but when he was young, he had liked nothing more than dreaming up ways to get Dudley in trouble.

"That was good," he said, when he thought they were far away enough from the library to stop for a minute. "You _are _bloody brilliant, Malfoy."

Malfoy's laughter cut off as though he had been hit, and he sat up and stared at Harry. His face was bright pink, but Harry thought it was pinker than could be accounted for by simple laughter. Then he told himself that it was stupid to think he could grade Malfoy's blushes, and turned away.

"Thank you," Malfoy said.

Those words joined Malfoy's words about trusting him from the other night and felt warm inside his chest. Harry scowled, and told them—and himself—and Malfoy—and the world in general—not to be stupid.

He didn't really have any hope that any of them would listen, though.


	6. This Is Just Not Harry's Week

Thanks again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Six—This Is Just Not Harry's Week_

"But what did you hope to _accomplish_?"

Harry rolled his eyes. He just wanted to eat his breakfast in peace, but Hermione wanted explanations, and Harry knew that he wouldn't have that peace until he gave them. He put his spoon down and leaned around Ron so he could see her.

"Cause them fear," he said. "I know that most of them aren't going to stop bullying the Slytherins just because I say so. If we can terrify them into it, then that'll work better." He picked up his spoon and got exactly three bites of cornflakes before Hermione spoke again.

"But reasonable argument would work so much better," she said, eyes slightly misty. "Honestly, Harry, speak to most people long enough and they'll realize that they've done something wrong. You don't have to torture them."

"Funny," Harry said, when he swallowed, "that you care so much about me and Malfoy terrifying these people but you didn't care when it was Slytherins suffering that."

Hermione opened her mouth, then snapped it shut again. Ron chortled, which caused a small flight of airborne pieces of toast. Harry could imagine them crying _Free! Free!_ in silent voices as they flew. "He's got you there, Hermione," he said.

"I didn't—I do care," Hermione said, but weakly. Suddenly she took an interest in her eggs that Harry hadn't seen her display before.

Harry snorted and finished his breakfast, leaning back in his chair to look around the Great Hall. For the first time since swearing the oath, he hadn't been pulled out of bed last night. He hoped that people had taken his warning seriously and would stop that.

Quite a few empty chairs stood at the Gryffindor and Hufflepuff tables this morning, while the Slytherin table seemed more crowded than Harry remembered it being. He hoped that was a good sign, even as the thought that the Slytherins might have felt too scared to come to meals made his stomach clench with anger. If the school could just take a lesson and not have to have it re-taught every few days, things would get more back to normal.

Harry thought he was starting to know how Snape had felt, with so many people who simply _refused to learn._

Malfoy was sitting at the head of the Slytherin table, of course, his face so pinched Harry thought it was a miracle he could swallow anything. He caught Harry's eye and leaned forwards, staring, before he nodded pointedly. He wanted everyone else to know who he associated with, Harry thought as he nodded back. Already counting on how he would use his "friendship" with the Boy-Who-Lived to good effect. Well, Harry didn't mind that much as long as he didn't do anything criminal.

A stir at the High Table made him turn his head. McGonagall was rising to her feet, a stern expression covering so much of her face that Harry groaned. When her eyebrows bent deep like that, someone was about to get not only detention, but a whole lot of sententious moralizing.

Hermione had noticed, too, and was nudging people around her to be quiet, hissing more loudly than anything at the table but Ron's chewing. Harry rolled his eyes and tapped her shoulder. "Stop telling people to hush," he whispered.

Hermione blushed and fell silent just as McGonagall began to speak. Harry wondered if she had cast a _Sonorus _Charm on her throat, because her voice was more carrying than usual.

"There was a serious attack on certain students in the library last night," McGonagall said. "Involving illusions and panic and fear." For one second, she looked at Harry. Harry gazed back, his arms folded behind his head. She could _try _to stop him from doing things to protect the Slytherins, but he doubted the oath would like that.

McGonagall shook her head and glanced away. "The students involved have admitted that it happened to them, or they _believe _it happened to them, because they were trying to deny access to the library to Slytherin students." She leaned forwards, hands braced on the table. Harry blinked. An even deeper silence descended over the Great Hall.

_Is she really—?_

"This is a school," McGonagall said. "A school founded by four people who worked together to create an institution of _learning_, one where all students would have the same chance, though not in the same way. The reason the Sorting Hat places you into Houses is to play upon your particular strengths and give you a chance to be with people like yourself. No House is inherently evil, though some may produce a higher percentage of Dark wizards than others."

_Thank you for that little reminder, _Harry thought crossly, but he knew McGonagall tended to be fair before any other consideration, so he should have expected it.

"Anyone who blocks the learning opportunities of other students, whether by barricading the library or taking their books or creating an environment where they must care more about defending themselves than about doing their homework, will be disciplined in the future." McGonagall paused, then pressed the next words into that careful, listening silence. "With _severity._"

Then she sat down and began to eat her breakfast again. The silence broke into stares and chatter.

"There," Hermione said, sounding like someone who had run a race. "She's going to punish anyone who goes after the Slytherins!" She beamed at Harry. "Does that address some of your concerns?"

"Some," Harry said. "Not all." He turned his head, and sure enough, Malfoy's eyes were waiting for him. He nodded, as though Harry had asked a question aloud, and then turned to listen to a first-year girl beside him. "It would have been nice if she could mention how the Slytherins are being singled out, instead of sounding as though the restriction on studying applied to everyone equally."

"Well, it _might_," Hermione said. "If someone from Slytherin decides to barricade the library against Gryffindors, then it would."

Harry abruptly found that he didn't want any more of his breakfast. He stood up, pushing his plate back, told Hermione, "See you in Potions," and left the Great Hall.

Hermione said something to his back. Harry just shook his head and kept walking, and when he got outside the Hall, leaned against a staircase and took deep breaths that he hoped would wash his lungs clean.

_I'm not—yes, that could _happen. _But it's not what's _been _happening. Why are people more interested in hypothetical situations and making good arguments than what goes on in front of their eyes?_

Harry stood there until he thought he'd calmed down, and then made his way to Potions, where his mood was not improved by the one Hufflepuff in the class glaring at him and Slughorn looking triumphant, as though he had personally solved the problem.

* * *

Harry landed lightly, the wind skimming through his hair as he brought the broom down. He knew he was grinning like a moron. Well, no one was on the pitch to see it, so that didn't matter.

He hopped off the broom and made his way towards the Quidditch shed, bending at the waist and stretching his arms above his head to relieve sore muscles. It had been a while since he had a flight that good—a while since he'd gone up on his broom without worrying about the Snitch and flown in circles and dips and dives, just trying to exercise.

It had taken time away from the Defense essay that he had to finish tomorrow, but that was totally worth it, Harry thought as he started to put his equipment away. He could write Defense essays in his sleep, and it wasn't bragging to say that he knew more than Professor Meadows, the theory-oriented bloke McGonagall had hired for the position this year. Besides, Meadows would probably bow his head and accept whatever the Great Harry Potter handed in.

_Sometimes it's good to be the Chosen One._

A spell hit him in the middle of his back, blasting him off his feet and into the wall of the Quidditch shed.

Harry rolled with the impact, wrapping his arms around his head and ducking it so that it would be as safe as possible. He was rewarded with a blow on his shoulder as he hit the wall rather than a blow on his head, and his left arm promptly tingling and going numb from the shoulder down.

_Fucker, too bad for you that's not my wand hand, _Harry raged as he stood up and reached for his wand with his right hand.

There was no one in the door of the Quidditch shed. Harry stomped over and stared around, panting, narrow-eyed, but no matter how hard he looked, he couldn't see any possible places for an attacker to hide. It was highly probable that they'd fled rather than sitting around and waiting for him to see them.

As the adrenaline faded, Harry started to take stock of his injuries. Bruised shoulder and numb arm, yes. But the small of his back, where the spell had hit in the first place, also really fucking hurt. He twisted around, trying to see the injury there, and then finally went into the showers and stripped down in front of the mirror.

He hissed. A large, blue-black bruise took up half the skin on his back, it seemed, and it hurt more as he looked at it. Harry poked at it, and ended up pulling his hand back as if he'd touched a hot stove. At least sensation was returning to his left arm. The original spell—which he didn't recognize—had done a lot more damage than the fall.

_What the fuck was that, anyway?_

Harry shook his head and dropped his shirt back into place. At least it didn't look as though he was bleeding anywhere, and he knew exactly why this had happened. Someone was angry about the way he was defending the Slytherins. All _this _did was made Harry want to have more sessions of that defense club for the Slytherins, and set up something else.

Harry paused with a small smile when he thought about it. Yes, there was something else he could do, something that would make the harassment of Slytherins anywhere in the school _everyone's _problem until they did something about it.

_I was right. Reason doesn't work. Trying to get the teachers involved doesn't work, although it might have subdued one or two people. The only thing that works is annoying people or frightening them until they stop._

* * *

"Attention," a calm voice announced above their heads the next Monday in potions. "Attention. A Slytherin is being abused in the dungeons."

Slughorn blinked and lifted his head, as the rest of the class turned to stare. "What is that?" he asked of no one in particular.

Harry knew exactly what it was, of course: one of the alarm wards that he'd set up throughout the school, to react when someone with a Slytherin tie started suffering pain in the immediate area. Of course, the oath scar burning on his chest would tell him about that, too, and it tugged him out of his seat and in the direction of the dungeons, but this way, everyone would know what was happening.

"Attention," said the voice, in a much more strident tone this time. "Attention. A Slytherin is being abused in the dungeons."

"Who caused that?" Slughorn demanded. "Turn it off. And Mr. Potter, where are you going?"

"You heard the voice," Harry said innocently, and ducked out of the classroom. Really, he was glad to get out of there, away from Slughorn's fawning, though he was sorry for the cause of it.

He'd run most of the way in the direction of the incident—with the alarm ward above him repeating itself louder and louder every few seconds—when he realized that he had someone following him. Harry whipped around with the wand in his hand. Whoever this was, he was going to deal with them quickly and then get back to handling the immediate threat to whatever Slytherin was in trouble.

His back ached as he moved, and the edges of his vision went briefly white with pain. Harry hissed between his teeth. The stupid bruise on his back was still there, and he had started noticing blood in his urine when he pissed. But it would just have to go away and sit at the end of his list of problems for a while.

Malfoy stepped back from him, one hand raised. "I just want to help, Potter. I think it's time that we did some defending of our own." He frowned and peered more closely at Harry. "What's wrong with you?"

"I'm angry that this is happening _yet again_," Harry snapped, and began running, while the alarm ward shrilled and screamed. Malfoy followed him, or at least Harry thought so from the thump of his footsteps. Well, fine. He could come along, and maybe do something. Harry just hoped that he wouldn't get in the way.

He found the Slytherin, a fourth-year, being cornered in one of the abandoned classrooms Harry suspected Snape of making into torture rooms. The two students above him were both in Gryffindor robes and ties, and that was all Harry saw before the rage took over.

"_Alapa!_" he shouted, and both Gryffindor students leaped and bellowed at the same time as the spell gave them a box on the ear. Harry, gritting his teeth against the idiotic pain in his back, leaped between them and the Slytherin and aimed his wand at both.

He didn't know either of them, he saw with some relief, though they were both fifth-years. He was tired of knowing people who were involved in this mess. It had been bad enough that Gryffindor students joined in blocking the library last week. He gestured with his wand, and the alarm ward shrieked once more and then fell silent. Harry wanted these two gits to hear every word he was going to say.

"Go away," he said. "Or I'll tie your ankles together and turn you into balls for werewolves to play with."

The two boys exchanged glances. One of them muttered something. The other shook his head, and then turned and faced Harry with a deep breath.

"My name is Ian Gerrold," he said.

"And?" Harry asked, although he was partially glad that he had a name to pin on a face. He shifted his weight as something seemed to kick him in the back again, and grimaced. _That can stop any time now. _He darted a glance at the corridor beyond the two boys, and discovered that Malfoy wasn't anywhere in sight. Harry snorted. _Must have buggered off._

"I challenge you, Harry Potter, to a formal wizards' duel." Gerrold inched nearer, his eyes bright.

Harry cast a quick look back at the fourth-year Slytherin and found that he seemed to be all right except for a bruise or two on his face. He nodded to Harry and then flattened himself against the wall. More and more, Harry was suspecting that this was a trap for him rather than the boy.

"Fine," he said. "When and where?"

"Here," said Gerrold, and he bowed to Harry and flung his first spell so quickly that Harry had no time to bow back.

Harry swore as he caught the first spell on his upraised arm, and a bright, painful sensation flashed down the bone and into his eyes. It was the stupid surprise, he thought, or he would have been on his guard. As it was, he had to fall backwards, tripped over a desk, and ended up on his back as Gerrold launched something else. Luckily, a Shield Charm seemed to deflect more of it.

Gerrold's friend had stepped away, and the Slytherin boy was no longer hiding directly behind Harry but against the far wall. That would help somewhat, Harry thought, as he slowly and painfully picked himself up. His back flared, his arm flared, and the bruise on his shoulder seemed to be getting into the act, too.

"I was unaware that a formal duel started without drawing a circle," he told Gerrold as he started to pace from side to side, hoping he could use his movements to distract Gerrold's attention from his hands.

"That's for fools," Gerrold said, and then moved his wand in an elaborate spiral. "_Arcuo!_"

Harry snapped another shield into place, but a bit of the spell slipped through, and he gasped aloud as his spine bent like a bow. Much more of that, he knew, and the spell would force him into a more and more curved position, until bones broke or, at the very least, he dropped his wand.

Luckily, he had a high pain threshold. Harry leaned his wand arm around to the side and cried, "_Finite Incantatem! Incarcerous! Expelliarmus!_"

The spell let him go, dropping him to the floor with another gasp, and he watched with grim satisfaction as _his _spells slammed home, one by one, dropping Gerrold in bonds and sending his wand flying to Harry's hand. Harry got back to his feet, wincing, and looked over his shoulder to make sure the Slytherin was still all right.

"My name is Oswald Everhardt," said the other Gryffindor boy.

Harry groaned aloud. He could see their strategy now: wear him down with formal duels that he wasn't allowed to refuse, and keep on going until he was so wounded that he couldn't continue.

"_Stupefy_," a voice said beyond the entrance to the room, and Everhardt's eyes crossed as the red light felled him. Harry Summoned his wand just to be sure and then glanced up, shaking his head as Malfoy stepped in.

"About time you got here," he said. "Can you check on your Housemate? He might have other injuries I didn't see."

"He's fine," Malfoy said, without a glance at the boy as he came towards Harry. "You're the one who should see Madam Pomfrey."

"The one spell just made my arm hurt, and it's wearing off," Harry said, shaking his right arm. "See? As for—" He turned to the fourth-year boy. "What's your name?"

"Xavier," he muttered, eyes on the floor, and then seemed to realize that wasn't sufficient and looked up, blinking. "Xavier Reynolds."

Harry nodded encouragingly, then turned back to Malfoy. "I'm so glad that you can diagnose Reynolds as having no injuries just by looking at him, and I'm sure you'll make a great Healer, but in the meantime, maybe you could _act _as though he deserves some attention and escort him up to the hospital wing?"

"Potter, don't be an idiot," Malfoy said, voice so low and vicious that Harry stared at him. He had thought he and Malfoy were getting along, though he wouldn't say they had gone on the road to being friends. But at least they were past insults for no reason.

"You're being the idiot," Harry said. "Look, we've got a case of yet another abuse, and one we should take up with McGonagall this time, because she made that announcement and it _still_ didn't stop some people. And this time the alarm wards let more people know what was happening. We should publicize the names of the ones who did this as soon as possible." He looked scornfully at Gerrold and Everhardt where they lay, and shook his head. "And maybe discover a cure for the terminal stupidity they have while we're at it."

Malfoy seized his arm. Harry hissed beneath his breath, and Malfoy nodded. "Hear that? It's a sign that the spell went deeper than you know." He started pulling Harry in the direction of the door, ignoring the fact that Reynolds was still gaping after them and that the tugging was more likely to hurt Harry than otherwise. "You need to see Madam Pomfrey."

Harry opened his mouth to object, and at the same moment, Malfoy's arm curved around behind him and pressed against his back. Harry couldn't help it this time; he cried out, and Malfoy immediately stopped moving and turned to him with a pale face. Well, paler than usual, Harry amended, already feeling his own face flush because he couldn't keep quiet.

"Did I hurt you?" Malfoy bent down in front of him and reached out to touch Harry's back again, fingers gently probing at the bruise.

"Yes," Harry said, and dodged the touch. "Look, it's nothing, all right? Someone ambushed me in the Quidditch shed the other day and flung some spell at me that hurled me into the wall. But I can't let them know that they succeeded at that, because they did it specifically to discourage me from helping you lot. So—"

Malfoy ignored him and pushed his shirt up. A moment later, he mentioned a few creative acts that he apparently thought hippogriffs and centaurs should do together. Then he whirled back around in front of Harry, his mouth so tight that Harry shook his head. He could understand why Malfoy would be distressed that his protector was down and suffering an injury, but he looked…personally distressed, somehow, as though Harry really was a friend.

_Well, I reckon one person can think of the other as a friend even though the other doesn't._

"I know that spell," Malfoy said. "It's meant to create internal bleeding that gets deeper and more severe as it goes on."

Harry rolled his eyes. "Oi, Malfoy, I think I would have _noticed _if I had that. It's not internal bleeding. There's lots of pain and blood when I piss, that's all." He paused and eyed Malfoy suspiciously, wondering if he had cast some spell that would loosen Harry's tongue. "And I can't believe that I'm telling you this."

"That's even _worse_," Malfoy said. "A worse variation of the spell, which eventually causes kidney failure. Potter. Harry. Come with me. We need to get you to Madam Pomfrey before it spreads any further." He curved an arm around Harry's shoulders this time and started helping him towards the door, his expression weirdly tender. Harry had to look away from it because it made him feel weird and goopy inside.

"But that's what they want," Harry said, wriggling fiercely and yet somehow not managing to get out of the hold. "They want me to be laid up in the hospital wing and unable to help you. It's bad enough that I was sent there because of a stupid plate from Matthieson, of all things. I can't go now."

"This is a _spell_," Malfoy said, face so close that he looked as though he would butt it into Harry's face. Harry clutched his wand, to be ready for that. "A _curse_. No one's going to blame you, not once they hear about it—and the Slytherins will, so we can organize a guard for you."

"This is getting ridiculous," Harry said. "Do you know your eyes go grey and look like they're going to swirl when you're staring at someone from this close?"

"You're clearly delirious and can't be trusted with your own care," Malfoy said sweetly, and then paused. All expression dropped away from his face except a look of burning intensity that made Harry feel as if he were once more inside the Fiendfyre. "Harry. Please trust me. This is bad."

_Trust him? _Harry's shoulders hunched and his skin prickled. This was weird and strange—stranger than the oath and the fact of protecting the Slytherins in the first place—and he wasn't sure he liked it. He couldn't deny, much as he wanted to, that Malfoy was doing more than he needed to to protect his own skin.

And the way he looked at Harry wasn't the way you'd look at a friend.

But it was compelling, in its own right. Harry bowed his head, sighing as the bruise on his shoulder and his back and his arm that had been hit by Gerrold's spell today, and even his spine, all joined in a chorus of pain.

"All right," he muttered. "Just this once."

Malfoy reached out and touched Harry's face, lightly, one hand cupping his jaw and cheek as though he assumed it would hurt Harry if he laid a heavier touch on him. He opened his mouth, started to say something, and then shut it again.

His hands as he helped Harry out of the room and towards the hospital wing were absurdly gentle. Harry walked as carefully as he could and avoided looking Malfoy in the eye again all the way there. He told himself it was because Reynolds trailed behind them and he didn't want to make a scene in front of an audience.

There were some things he would never be ready to say aloud, and there were some things he could just _stop feeling_, right now. The warmth in his stomach and the weakness of his spine would go hide if they knew what was good for them.

_Can I blame the spine thing on Gerrold's spell?_


	7. The General In His Hospital Bed

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Seven—The General in His Hospital Bed_

Harry had to admit that he didn't remember most of the trip to the hospital wing or what happened immediately when he got there. There was a voice exclaiming in dismay and a wand prodding at him, but it wasn't like _that_ was new. Then someone scolded him. Harry could tell it was a scolding from the depth and speed of the words even if he couldn't make out anything they said. He just nodded. That was what you did with scoldings: nodded and acted contrite, like you wanted to do better next time, and then they were satisfied and left you alone.

Harry wondered if anyone _smart _in the history of the world had ever used scoldings.

He came back to consciousness just as Madam Pomfrey held out a vial of red liquid towards him. Harry eyed it. He didn't distrust her the way he had Snape, but this time, there were other things to consider.

"What will drinking that do to me?" he asked.

Malfoy, standing beside the bed, stared at him as if Harry ought to have jumped for joy at the sight of the potion. Harry ignored him and focused on Madam Pomfrey. Her reaction would be his guide, really. After all, Madam Pomfrey was the one who had Healed him dozens of times, and Malfoy was only the one who had noticed his wound, brought him here, reassured him, and acted as though he would be really upset if Harry wasn't cured…

_Stupid comparisons._

"It will make you sleep," Madam Pomfrey said, putting her hand on her hip in a familiar gesture of exasperation. Harry had the feeling she'd have liked to have put both hands on her hips, but doing that would have meant crushing the vial and spilling the potion. He tried to telepathically tell her she could do that, for all of him, but apparently her brain was closed to receiving new messages today. "Your body needs a period of enforced inactivity to heal the internal damage."

"Malfoy said that there wasn't internal damage," Harry pointed out. "This is the worse version of the curse, not the one that just caused internal bleeding." He was going to show that his memory was intact.

"Potter," Malfoy said, in the voice of someone who has stepped into a room of idiots and been accosted by the lead one, "your kidneys _are _internal."

"But you still made a distinction." Harry wasn't going to look at him. His attention was for Madam Pomfrey and not Malfoy and his dumb melting expressions. "So why do I need the potion?"

"The damage was advanced," Madam Pomfrey said grimly, and leaned forwards until her nose almost touched Harry's. "Do you know how close you came to death, Mr. Potter? Much closer than I like or than is _reasonable_, given the amount of pain you must have been in. You would have collapsed not long afterwards, if Mr. Malfoy hadn't brought you here."

The glance of quick wonder she gave Malfoy was the only thing that made Harry feel at home in an increasingly hostile situation. Madam Pomfrey thought he'd been in danger. Malfoy thought he'd been in danger. Malfoy was trying to humiliate him in front of an adult, except not really. Malfoy had looked at him like—

_If I'm not thinking about that look, then it doesn't exist, _Harry told himself determinedly. It wasn't like Malfoy would ever have the courage to pursue it or what it meant. Harry only had to ignore it and the problem would stop there.

"Yes, but if I'm asleep, what happens if the oath summons me out of bed?" he asked Madam Pomfrey. "Then your hard work is all undone. Can't you give me something that will leave me alert and able to move?"

Madam Pomfrey said something under her breath about "bloody oaths." Harry hoped she knew that he fully agreed with her about the uselessness of oaths in general and this oath in particular.

"There is nothing," Madam Pomfrey said at last. "I'm sorry, Mr. Potter," she added when Harry opened his mouth to protest. "But the damage—you don't understand how bad the damage truly was. You'll have to rest and hope that no one molests a Slytherin for at least a few hours. There's no other option."

Harry gritted his teeth and turned to Malfoy. "Then I need you to go to McGonagall and tell her about those boys who attacked Reynolds," he said. "She was the one who said that she was going to do something about people who obstructed others' learning. I think that was really only a way of phrasing things so that she wouldn't have to get involved in attacks that didn't happen inside the library or classrooms, but it's time to test it."

"_Mr. Potter!_" Madam Pomfrey gasped, shocked.

Harry ignored her, although he could feel the return of the pain she'd numbed with her spells, or what had felt like spells. He had to focus on Malfoy, because he was the only one who knew the situation and could act for Harry right now.

Malfoy slowly nodded, eyes fixed on him and face regaining a little color. "I wondered why you weren't more reassured by her public declaration," he murmured. "But I think she meant it, and Reynolds's case would certainly qualify under the expanded definitions."

"I don't want to talk about the size of things right now," Harry said impatiently. He could see Madam Pomfrey's hand twitching, and he thought she would launch the potion down his throat like a stone from a slingshot if she didn't get her way soon. "Go."

For some reason, Malfoy lingered long enough to lean near the bed and whisper, "Oh, but we should talk about the size of _certain _things very soon."

There were lots of things Harry could have said about crushes and the stupid people who had them then, but he didn't, partially because that would involve more delay and partially because he thought he knew what else Malfoy was talking about, and it was best not to encourage him.

"_Go_," he said, and added something else that he thought might spur Malfoy along, at least if he understood him correctly. "I'm depending on you."

Malfoy's eyes widened and his cheeks flushed a dusky rose. (And for fuck's sake, why was Harry thinking about them in those words? He wouldn't know a dusky rose from a sunrise one). Then he took off running.

"Finally," said Madam Pomfrey, and held out the potion so fast that she almost hurt Harry's face and broke his glasses and sent the shards into his eyes and blinded him and rendered him helpless so that the last Death Eaters could come and get him. She would be sorry _then_, Harry thought, as he accepted the potion and drank it with some dignity.

While he lay down and grumbled over the softness of the pillow—it was perfectly soft, which meant it would be hard to sit up if someone came into the infirmary suddenly—he felt Madam Pomfrey looking at him. He rolled his eyes. They were closed and she wouldn't notice. "What?" he asked.

"I hadn't realized that you distrusted Headmistress McGonagall so very much," Madam Pomfrey murmured. "It explains much about your actions this year."

Harry had a wonderful, cutting, adult speech prepared about how he wouldn't have distrusted her except that she had ignored the persecution of the Slytherins, and even then she didn't encourage other students to stop thinking about and dwelling on the war, and how she had known about this and _ignored _it, and how he was tired of having to do other people's jobs for them.

But he ended up making it only in his dreams, which was probably better all around, anyway.

* * *

"How do we know that you lot aren't using Polyjuice?"

The words woke Harry from a blurred dream where Malfoy was caught in cobwebs and he had to save him, and Malfoy was making it harder by looking at him the way he had when Harry agreed to go to the hospital wing. He blinked and tried to push himself up, whereupon the pillow got its dastardly revenge and made him fall back again.

At least that made the people gathered around his bed like it was a tomb turn and look at him, and Harry got his first glimpse of the situation.

"I'm going to fucking kill him," he said aloud.

"What do you mean, Potter?" That was Blaise Zabini, leaning against the wall nearest his bed and grinning like the idiot he so clearly was to have participated in this in the first place.

Harry just shook his head. Malfoy had only gone and put a guard of Slytherins around him, mostly sixth- and seventh-years, though Harry saw a few younger students among them, all puffed up with their self-importance. Beyond the Slytherins stood Ron, Hermione, and Neville, all looking around as though trying to determine where Madam Pomfrey was before drawing their wands.

"He wasn't serious about the guard," Harry told Zabini. "You must have known that."

Zabini's face took on a weird expression that Harry could only compare to the expression Aunt Petunia used when speaking with one of her more pious neighbors. "I don't know what you're talking about," he said. "I know that the unofficial leader of our House came back this afternoon and gave orders that you were to be protected at all times."

"If he's the unofficial leader, then those are unofficial orders," Harry said firmly, and flung the blanket back.

Zabini caught the corner of it in his hand. His smile had vanished. "Not so," he said softly. "We're going to keep you safe no matter what, Potter."

Harry narrowed his eyes. "That's an interesting reversal of roles, considering you couldn't even keep _yourselves _safe."

"The situation is different, and you know it." Zabini's gaze didn't waver. "Don't pretend to be that stupid. Maybe it fools _them_—" he jerked his head at Harry's friends "—but not us." He relaxed into another grin. "Not to mention the importance that you have to our glorious unofficial leader."

Harry gaped at him. He had hoped the emotion he saw in Malfoy's eyes would die a natural death, but it couldn't if other people knew about it.

_I'll have to bribe Zabini not to mention it again, _he thought, and turned to his friends. "Hermione, what did we do first year together that was so important to make us into friends?" he asked.

Hermione looked puzzled for only a second before she smiled. "We killed a mountain troll together," she said. "All three of us."

Harry nodded to Zabini. "They are who they say they are. Let them through."

"Yes, O Glorious One," Zabini said solemnly, and then turned and gestured at the Slytherins. They parted like a real guard, sweeping away to the sides in a way that reminded Harry of the Aurors who had fetched him from the Dursleys' house the summer before fifth year. Harry rolled his eyes and managed to rise to his feet, though Zabini hovered beside him as if he would need more help than the support of the bed.

Hermione stepped forwards and hugged him. Harry patted her back. "I'm all right," he said. "I was hit with a nasty curse, but Madam Pomfrey cured me." He decided that he wasn't going to mention _when _he'd been hit with the curse, because that would only make Hermione scold him, and Harry didn't think he could explain his theory of why scoldings didn't work to her.

"Oh, thank goodness," Hermione sighed, and stood there holding him even when Harry wriggled uncomfortably. Ron put a hand on her shoulder and raised his eyebrows before she came to her senses and let him go. Then she put her hands on her hips. Harry wondered if she knew the circumstances and was going to scold him after all for letting the curse go on so long, but she had a different target.

"Don't you think that this has gone on long enough?" she asked grimly. "All the fighting, all the demonizing of those people who aren't Slytherins, all the struggling and fighting for the Slytherins on your own?"

Harry didn't think; he just grabbed his shirt and jerked at it so that she could see the oath-scar. Hermione blushed, but didn't look away, and Neville and Ron nodded. "What else am I supposed to do with this?" Harry demanded. "I don't even know how long the bloody oath's going to _last_. I just can't stop protecting the Slytherins because you think it'd be a good idea."

"That's not what I meant," Hermione said. "It's just—that alarm advertised itself to everybody, Harry, and not just who was at fault."

"How was I supposed to know who was at fault before I got there?" Harry dropped the shirt back into place and glared at her.

"I meant—" Hermione frowned the way Harry had seen her frown at complex Arithmancy problems. "I meant that you're acting hostile to Gryffindor and Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff students," she said at last. "Not everyone wants to hurt the Slytherins. Some of us are trying to help. Why are you so hostile?"

Harry shook his head. "You and Ron and Neville and Ginny have helped, yeah, and I'm sorry if I was hostile to you." Hermione looked stunned. _She obviously didn't expect me to apologize, _Harry thought crossly. _Well, I did now. _"But the other students aren't speaking up against it. They want to be excused being lumped in with everyone else, but apparently they don't care that some of their Housemates _are _bullies. That suggests that they only care about this when it affects them, which means the alarm wards are a good tactic. If I make them have to care about it, they'll act against the bullies eventually."

"You haven't _asked _for help," Hermione said.

"Everyone knows about this by now." Harry waved his hand around the hospital wing, hoping Hermione would understand that he meant to indicate the rest of the school, too. "Lots of people knew about the bullying. Did anyone else from another House ever try to stop it, or say that it was unfair?" He turned and looked at Zabini.

"No." It was Parkinson who answered. Harry hadn't even noticed that she was among the guards. She had her arms folded and an expression of complicated enjoyment on her face, despite the topic they were discussing. "I was attacked once with rotten fruit in full view of a Ravenclaw girl, Veronica Wittington, that I used to study with. She hunched her shoulders up and ran away. Oh, she came to me later and begged my forgiveness, but apparently she was too afraid for her own precious skin."

Zabini nodded. "The same. There was a Hufflepuff prefect who I know disapproved of Matthieson's bullying, and at first I thought he might have tried to handle it privately, rather than in public where it would disgrace the House. But Matthieson got worse and worse, and the other prefect would sit there staring at his hands. I'm sure he felt _sorry_ about it, but being sorry did absolutely nothing."

"They might have been victims themselves," Hermione said. "It isn't easy to go against your entire House." She gave Harry a sideways glance. Harry was sure she was remembering some of their rows over Quidditch, where most of the Gryffindors had taken Harry and Ron's side about having to practice instead of study.

"Yeah," Harry said, "but they can't have it both ways. Either they believe that the bullying's wrong and they say so, or they can keep silent and have the approval of their Housemates. They don't get to get exempted from it, and their whinging about how we're being so _mean _to them isn't high on my priority list."

Hermione sighed. "That doesn't sound like the Harry Potter I know," she said.

"The Harry Potter you know has been through a war," Harry said briefly, "and he's tired, and worried, and has to save a bunch of people practically on his own. These other people are just going to have to save themselves." That was one thing he was almost grateful to the oath for, he thought. He couldn't be expected to save the arses of people who were acting directly contrary to it.

Hermione looked at him sadly. "I understand your position, but I hoped we could come to some sort of agreement on this. I know a lot of people are really upset about what's happened and dislike what you're doing."

Harry narrowed his eyes. "Are you inferring this, or did they come to you and complain, or are you talking about the feelings you're experiencing, or what?"

"A few of them came to me and talked about it, yes," Hermione said, "and then asked me to speak with you."

Harry nodded slowly, feeling bitterness move through him like an ocean current. "I see. They lacked even the courage to face me."

"That's not _fair_, Harry," Hermione said. "Everyone suffered last year. Everyone's trying to recover this year. It's what McGonagall said. The school has to be a good learning environment for everyone, not just the people you like."

"Then why am _I_ the only one who has to live up to that standard?" Harry snapped. "Why aren't these people who're so concerned about the way they're treated _also_ the ones trying to make things better? Not to mention that there's a big difference between memories and being mistreated right here, right now, in the present. The curse I was suffering from could have _killed _me. I'm more concerned with that. And I don't like the Slytherins," he added belatedly. "The oath, remember?"

He thought that would get a bad reaction from behind him, but the only one who responded was Zabini, and that with a chuckle. Harry shook his head. "Do you have an answer?" he asked Hermione, his anger puffing out like a candle flame. "I really would like to hear one."

"No," Hermione said. "I only know how they're feeling."

"Tell them to stand up for themselves," Harry said. "Or stand up for the Slytherins, or suggest some other solution I can use besides the alarm wards. I _refuse _to worry about whinging from people who might not be just like everyone else but who are sure as fuck _acting _just like everyone else. I only have so much energy." He turned and climbed back into bed, tugging the sheets up again, and silently thanking Malfoy for bringing him to the hospital wing. It made the perfect excuse to hold off Hermione's demand that he think about everyone in the entire world.

And he understood why she would think that way, he really did, and he was sorry if he'd hurt her, like he said. But the mere thought of trying to be nice to people who wouldn't help and wouldn't stop their Housemates was another layer of complexity he just couldn't deal with.

Not alone.

"We'll see you later, mate," Ron said in subdued tones, and Neville nodded when Harry peered back over his shoulder. Then they all trooped out of the hospital wing.

Harry sighed and started to go back to sleep, but Zabini tapped him on the shoulder. He rolled over and raised his eyebrows. "What?" he snarled. He thought he managed to snarl it politely, all things considered.

"I won't tell our unofficial leader that you showed Granger your chest," Zabini said. "In case you were concerned about that."

Harry stared. He wondered if he had dropped into a world where everyone else knew a series of secrets that he didn't, and then discarded the thought impatiently. He'd felt like that most of his life, thanks to Dumbledore and Snape. "What?"

Zabini nodded, and there was no trace of a mocking grin now, though Harry didn't know how far that actually meant he was serious. "He would be jealous. So I won't tell him. I think you're doing the best you can."

He stepped back and left Harry wrapped in confusion as profound as the end of the war. Then Harry decided that he wasn't going to think about or worry about it, and closed his eyes in determination.

_People can just make up their own moral dilemmas for a while._

* * *

"Hullo, Potter."

Harry blinked and sat up before he realized that he didn't know what was going on, and he had apparently slept _again._ He scowled and touched his chest. Well the oath-scar still seemed to be there and he manifestly hadn't been burned alive—there would be more pain—so he reached for his glasses and looked around.

Malfoy was sitting on a stool next to his bed, gazing at him in interest. Beside him was a tray with a bowl of porridge and a plate with what looked like several kinds of sliced fruit on it. Harry glanced at the porridge, then the fruit.

"Something wrong?" Malfoy asked in a bright tone that didn't disguise the sharp glint in his eyes.

"Yes," Harry snapped. "You've chosen food that's hard to put poison in. Are you losing your touch?"

Malfoy let his lips twitch, as though Harry had said something funny, and then reached out and took Harry's hand in his. Harry sat there, too startled to stop him. Then Malfoy reached down for the bowl of porridge and the spoon that was lying on the tray, and Harry pulled back his hand sharply.

"What the _fuck_?"

"I was going to eat some of the porridge," Malfoy said, staring at him with brilliant eyes, "so that you would see it wasn't poisoned."

Harry sighed. "You've made your point. Give that here, and tell me what's been happening." He looked around the hospital wing, noticing that it was empty except for a student two beds away from his who was muffled in bandages like a Muggle mummy. "What happened to _him_?"

"Which answer do you want first?" Malfoy looked at him with his head tilted to one side. "Some of us don't have mouths bigger than one response, you know."

Harry dug into the porridge with his spoon. He disliked Malfoy's version of friendly banter, but he reckoned it was better than the git doing some other things he could have with—well, what he was feeling.

_Not thinking about that. Those feelings don't exist, _he chanted to himself, and kept chanting it while he worked through the porridge, so that when he was done he had a bit of practice in thinking that way.

He put the bowl down, and only then realized that Malfoy hadn't answered any of his questions. He turned and gave a frown that he knew was impressive. Dudley had started being wary of that frown during the summer before his fifth year. "Well?"

"I wanted to wait until you were done eating so that I could have your input," Malfoy said innocently. "And, obviously, I wanted to make sure that you would take in the food that's necessary to maintain your health."

"You appointing yourself my health monitor is going to get old pretty bloody quickly," Harry said crossly. "Tell me what that boy over there is doing first. Is that Reynolds?"

"No, he was fine," Malfoy said. "I told you. That's one of the attackers. Everhardt, I heard him say his bloody name was. He apparently had a run-in with one of the other Gryffindors." He let the smirk Harry was sure he'd been holding back blossom across his face. "It looks like we finally have allies."

Harry sighed in relief. "Who was it? The one who attacked him, I mean."

"No one seems to know." Malfoy shrugged when Harry glared. "I prefer it that way. That means no one knows who among their Housemates might disapprove of them, and who might come up behind them and attack them one dark night. It gives them a taste of the fear we've lived with for so long." He smiled dreamily.

Harry shivered, and hoped that he never did anything to cause that dreamy smile, for more than one reason. "What did McGonagall say when you reported Everhardt and Gerrold? Did she punish them?"

"Detention," Malfoy said. "Of course, Everhardt was punished by our mysterious friend shortly after that. I believe Gerrold is already serving his detention. It's almost eight now." He looked expectantly at Harry. "What do you think we should do next?"

"Why am I suddenly the leader?" Harry complained. "Zabini said that you were the leader of Slytherin."

"Oh, don't worry, Potter, I'll take the position back when you least expect it." Malfoy said that with a soft tone and glittering eyes that Harry could pretend were normal, as long as he didn't spend too much time looking at the glitter. "But in the meantime, you're our liaison with the rest of the school. What should be next on the list?"

"More defense classes," Harry said. "And more alarm wards, more specific if you can make them so. Wards that announced the names of the people attacking your Housemates would be favorite."

Malfoy nodded. "But beyond that? I feel we have to do something to step this up, to make it more dramatic, but I don't know that fear is the right way to do that."

Harry grimaced. He could think of one way to make it more dramatic immediately, but that wouldn't be his first choice. Luckily, there were other options available.

"I can get Slughorn to do what I want if I promise him that I'll attend one of his parties or give him an autograph to sell or something," he said, rolling his eyes so that Malfoy would know this wasn't exactly normal behavior for him. Then he wondered why he cared what Malfoy thought. That was another stupid idea, and he put it aside. "If I persuade him to let me stay in the Slytherin common room for one night, do you think you could persuade the rest of them to let me?"

Malfoy stared at him with his mouth open. Harry waved his hand in front of his eyes, concerned, when he hadn't moved for several minutes. He was glad that he _hadn't _mentioned the option that involved him kissing Malfoy now, even as a joke. It probably would have meant a heart attack. Not that he was mentioning that, or thinking about that, because the choice didn't exist, because the feelings didn't exist.

It was nice, Harry thought, how many things tied themselves up in a neat ball of nonexistence once you really tried.

Malfoy recovered and whispered, "You'd do that? Really?"

"It's less than what I'm doing now," Harry said, amused that Malfoy still looked as though someone had hit him. Well, maybe someone had recently. Harry put aside the frown that arose at that thought, and said, "Well, it _is_."

"Staying with us, in friendship, and trusting that you won't be attacked," Malfoy said. "That's bigger. You know it is."

"This is some strange Slytherin custom, obviously," Harry said. "Probably since you lot almost never have friends."

Malfoy scowled at him. Back on familiar territory, Harry raised his eyebrow and said, "Well, can you persuade them?"

"Yes," Malfoy said, and stomped to the door of the hospital wing. He stopped there, and Harry watched his back, hoping that he wouldn't reverse himself and bring up some other consideration now.

"This is bigger than either of us," Malfoy said, without looking over his shoulder. "Bigger than you can stop."

He turned around, gave Harry a smile light could have bounced off with an audible sound, and departed. Harry shook his head and reached for a banana on the plate, glancing at the bandaged Everhardt.

"Somehow, I think you might be the lucky one," he said.


	8. A Night That Is Not Wild and Wonderful

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Eight—A Night That Is Not Wild and Wonderful_

"And how many autographs would this be?"

Slughorn's voice had sunk into a hoarse whisper, and he was staring at the wall with big eyes, as though seeing scrolls of autographs—or maybe just the Galleons that he could get for them, Harry thought. He had to smile. Gryffindors weren't noble anymore, and Slytherins did certain stupid things that didn't exist but were still stupid. It was nice to see someone behaving the way Harry had expected him to.

"As many as I can sign without my wrist getting tired," Harry said. He wanted to make that the number rather than anything more concrete, because Merlin knew he would have to keep his wand hand in shape and flexible to defend the Slytherins, and he couldn't do that if it ached. "And not until _after _I spend the night in the Slytherin common room."

Slughorn waved a hand, so caught up in his vision of Galleons that Harry thought he could have got away with asking for the man's latest soft and comfortable chair, barely visible behind his desk. Although maybe not. Slughorn might have noticed when he sat down on the floor.

"My dear, dear boy," he murmured, voice thick with emotion. "You've done so much for our House. _Do _go ahead."

_You mean I've done so much for your Gringotts vault, _Harry thought, but he couldn't resent the man for going along with his plans. He nodded to him once and stepped out of the office, planning to make his way to the door of the Slytherin common room and knock on it.

At least, that was the plan. Harry was starting to think he might as well plan to fly to the moon and hurl rocks down from it on those abusing the Slytherins. It would have as much likelihood of coming true as any of the smaller ideas he came up with lately.

His "guard" was waiting outside the door, though this time Harry saw a few more fifth-years than older students among them. He sighed. Maybe that meant Malfoy was relaxing about his "safety," but Harry thought that it probably meant more people had asked for a turn, and Malfoy didn't want to deny them.

_If they obey him that much. God, if he likes being obeyed…_

Harry shuddered as a horrendous fantasy about Malfoy trying to order him around like a good little toy drifted behind his eyes, and then reminded himself that those feelings of Malfoy's didn't exist, which meant he had no reason to think about them, which meant that his previous thought and the fantasy both didn't exist, which meant Malfoy would never come up with such a horrible plan. What plan? Because it didn't exist.

"Potter." Of course Zabini was part of the guard, and of course also part of the folded-arm-intimidation club. "Our leader whom we don't mention by name has deputed us to ensure that you reach your destination."

"You don't need to talk like that, Zabini," Harry said wearily, stepping around him as much as he could to start the ridiculous procession. "I really don't think any _Daily Prophet _writers are hiding in the walls to make approving comments on your extensive vocabulary."

Zabini held up an admonishing finger. "You don't make comments about the vocabulary, and I don't tell Our Leader Whose Name We Do Not Speak about the chest thing."

"What chest thing?" asked a fifth-year behind them, predictably. Or at least Harry thought it was a fifth-year, because of the quiet, superior snickering from the others. _For Merlin's sake, _Harry thought in irritation, _Slytherins like to lord _everything _over each other, even jokes that don't really matter._

"Never you mind, Talbot," Zabini said without turning around. "Children like you will learn all about the follies of their elders when they're old enough."

"I'm old enough now," said the same sharp voice. "I stopped being a child when the Carrows tried to order me to break that Hufflepuff girl's ankles, Zabini, and you know it."

There was a short silence, and then Zabini nodded. Harry didn't think it was much of an apology as far as gestures went, but it seemed to relax the tension among the Slytherins. More of them spread out ahead of Harry, and no matter how subtly he tried to hurry along so that they didn't get the chance to do that, they just spread out again anyway. He shook his head and gave up in despair.

"I hope you know that I can't shield you lot if someone strikes at me while I'm in the middle of you," he did mutter, because he didn't think he should simply give up without some sort of token protest.

Someone walking in front of him turned around, and Harry found that he had once again overlooked Parkinson. _Maybe she has an Invisibility Cloak, _he thought suspiciously. _Or maybe she always waits for the moments when I'm most confused to show up. _That would be a worthy Slytherin conspiracy if there ever was one.

"The point of this isn't for you to protect us," said Parkinson. She continued to walk backwards, not even faltering when they came to a rough place in the dungeon floor that one of the others tripped over. Her superior smile grew wider, in fact. Harry wanted to tell her that walking backwards wouldn't be that impressive in a duel, but she cut in. "It's for us to protect you."

"The oath won't like that," Harry said.

"I've already learned one thing," Zabini murmured, moving up beside Harry. "When you say that the oath won't like something or won't permit you to do it, you really mean that _you_ don't like it, or won't do something."

"We're big girls and boys, Potter," Parkinson said coldly. "We can stand the truth. You want us to go away. We don't want to. Malfoy doesn't want to. Guess who wins in that contest of wills."

"You don't understand," Harry said, as calmly as he could over Zabini's frantic cutting gestures at Parkinson for mentioning Malfoy's name. "Malfoy doesn't command you. You don't have to do what he says. Neither do I."

Zabini and Parkinson both turned to face him this time, their heads revolving so slowly that they gave the impression of being robots of the kind that Dudley used to play with. Harry frowned and glanced at the walls. Surely _someone _had to find this little cavalcade tempting to attack? That way, he could do something that he was actually comfortable with.

"Idiot," Parkinson said.

"Hush." Zabini placed a restraining hand on her arm. "He doesn't know that we went through this a long time ago and found out it was useless. You can't expect him to have the same experiences we have." But even he was casting Harry a disapproving glance.

"The whole lot of you are mad," Harry said desperately. He didn't even know what they were _talking _about now, but he was certain of that. "Listen, Malfoy isn't some kind of evil enchanter—" He paused and reconsidered it. "All right, he _is_, but that doesn't mean he's some kind of Dark Lord."

"I can bloody well expect him to know what's going on," Parkinson said, "since he's had enough experience of it for himself, outside the walls of the common room. Tell me, Potter, what do you think happens when someone contradicts Draco? You must know. You've done it before."

"He hexes you?" But Harry's mind was full of a different Malfoy, who looked at him with soft, concerned eyes and led him towards the hospital wing. Of course, that was only possible to think of if he hadn't tucked that experience into the great ball of nonexistence, which he did just then, which meant he had never had the thought and had to look in confusion at Parkinson's slowly shaking head.

"No," said Parkinson. "Of course not. He _whinges_. For _hours_. You should have heard the endlessness with which he went on and on about you being Sorted into Gryffindor and refusing to be his friend the first night of first year. It was hard to tell which of those two experiences irritated him most. At least, he thought they were part of a conspiracy of the universe against him."

"And then when he found out you were a Parselmouth," Zabini added, "it was the same thing. 'Why should he get to have it and I don't?' Finally I snapped that maybe it was because you were the one meant to fight the Dark Lord and he wasn't, which made him shut up and think for—" He glanced at Parkinson.

"Half a minute," Parkinson said. "That's all. Then he started in again on the subject of how you should have been his best friend."

"And then there was the time last year," Zabini muttered darkly, "that I heard this kind of high, thin whinge coming behind the curtains of his bed, mixed with your name. I wanted to know how he could be blaming you for something when you weren't even at Hogwarts, so I opened the curtains. And—"

"Blaise," Parkinson said in a deadly serious voice. "We don't talk about the Curtains Incident. We don't _ever_ talk about it."

Zabini stared at the ground. "You're right, Pansy. Sorry. Don't know what came over me."

"It's understandable," Parkinson said, patting his shoulder. "Since there's someone here who could make it all different, if he _chooses _to." Once again, they both rotated their heads like robots to stare at Harry.

"You lot are creepy," Harry said, because he had no idea how anyone could say anything else. "Mad _and _creepy."

Parkinson snorted and turned to face the front again. Zabini kept one sharp eye on Harry all the way to the common room, as if assuming that he might jump out of line and flee down the corridor now that he knew the truth of what they were marching towards.

Harry took a deep breath and told himself firmly that he could deal with the creepiness of this, because he knew who was to blame for it.

_It's not their fault, poor things. They're under the domination of Malfoy, and that would do strange things to anyone's mind._

_The same thing could happen to me if I'm not strong enough and committed to rejecting—that is, not thinking about things that can't possibly happen. I have to be strong. I have to talk to him, but not _only_ to him, and look past him at the wall as often as I can, and discuss other defensive strategies and not personal things._

It was a good plan of action, and Harry was almost confident by the time they reached the door of the Slytherin common room and Parkinson leaned forwards to hiss the password that they wouldn't let him hear. _He _hadn't had to live with Malfoy day in and day out. _He _had no reason to obey him. He wasn't going to roll over and let him control everything.

* * *

"Are you comfortable, Potter?"

Harry shifted uneasily. Malfoy wasn't touching him. He was just sitting on the edge of the nearest couch, leaning forwards so that he could see Harry's face. He didn't often seem to blink. But he did turn away to speak with other people, notably Zabini and Parkinson and Goyle, and he did laugh at jokes that Harry didn't understand, and he did help younger students with their homework in what Harry thought was a normal way. So Harry shouldn't have felt as trapped and corralled as they did.

But somehow, whenever Malfoy's eyes shifted back to him, he remembered what the other boy had said as he was leaving the hospital wing.

_This is too big to stop._

Well, yes, Harry had to admit that he hoped Slytherins and Gryffindors would get along better even after the oath was done with—and when would that happen, anyway?—and it wouldn't simply fade without any legacy. But he didn't see why Malfoy would be so confident about it from just the slender little hope they had so far.

So he must have meant something else.

And here was where Harry ran into the difficulty that it was probably something he couldn't think about in the first place.

"You didn't answer my question," Malfoy said, lowering his voice into a familiar threatening register. Harry almost exhaled in relief, except that would have given Malfoy too much ammunition to use against him. "Are you comfortable?"

Harry looked around the common room again, searching for some inspiration to talk about. It was much quieter than the Gryffindor common room, cooler in the colors, as he had seen when he visited it during his second year. But there were still people playing games, writing essays, and fighting for the best spot near the fire. It didn't seem like the stronghold of enemies he had imagined during his younger years.

_Well, I was a bit stupid then, _he conceded, and brought his eyes back to Malfoy's face. "Not as much as I should be," he admitted. "I'm not really waiting for someone to attack me, but it's still not home."

Malfoy cast a quick glance around, as if to make sure that no one was listening to them. Harry could have reassured him of _that_. After some staring, most of the Slytherins seemed to have decided that Harry Potter's presence in their common room was something they could deal with best by ignoring it. They'd given more attention to Malfoy than to him.

Harry had to admit, that made him think there might be _something _to the instinctive way Parkinson and Zabini had spoken about deferring to Malfoy and—

_No. There's nothing. It's just a case of one strong person in a House seizing control, and the fact that he's one of the oldest students now. _

"It could have been," Malfoy murmured, apparently because he was finally satisfied that no one had Transfigured themselves into couch cushions to listen in. "You told me that you could have been Sorted into Slytherin and been here with us."

Harry leaned back in his chair and scratched behind his ear. "Well, yeah. But I wasn't."

"Only because of your own choice." Malfoy's eyes were bright and his face flushed, and Harry realized with a sinking heart that apparently they were going to Discuss His Emotional Revelation now. After what Parkinson and Zabini had said about Malfoy's whinging when he didn't get something, Harry was afraid even to stop the conversation. "Have you thought about that? How, because you influenced the Sorting Hat, that makes you even _more _clever and cunning and more of a candidate for Slytherin?"

Harry had thought about it a few times, in the dark of night, but mostly during his second and third years. He shrugged casually. "Well, yes, but I didn't grow up in Slytherin. You can't call me Slytherin now."

Malfoy gave him a small smile and stood. "Come on, Potter, I might as well show you the bedroom where you'll be spending the night."

Harry saw everyone who _had _been watching them in that moment promptly glance away, and that made him suspicious. But he told himself that it was probably just a joke bed that all the Slytherins were in on or something. He didn't really believe that they wanted to attack him anymore.

Besides, a practical joke would be infinitely preferable to what _else _that shine in Malfoy's eyes could mean.

Malfoy led him up the stairs, a curving series of steps that made Harry stare because they had small animals carved along the edges. Serpents, mostly, but there were some unicorns and phoenixes, too. He wondered if there had been a student Sorted into Slytherin once who really wasn't suited for it, and so became an eccentric genius carver. Maybe a secret Gryffindor. Why not? If he had gone into Gryffindor when the Hat thought he should have been here, it could have happened the other way around, too.

Then Harry stopped himself, appalled, because that would mean he agreed with Malfoy and was thinking of himself as a secret Slytherin.

_This has to have a cause, _he told himself, and cast a nonverbal charm that would test for invisible gases affecting the brain.

Malfoy opened the door and moved aside. Harry started to speak, but Malfoy shook his head. "I don't want to prejudice you," he murmured. "Step inside and tell me what you see."

Harry gave him one suspicious glance, and then sharply looked away. Malfoy's flush was heavier, his eyes more prominent, bulging. And lazy, somehow. Lazy with things Harry was not going to think about.

_Remember, a practical joke is better than that, _Harry reminded himself again, and stepped into the room.

Four beds stood, spaced wide apart, around the walls of a chamber that was round and decorated in dark green and bronze. They were all four-posters, like the Gryffindor beds Harry was used to, but the curtains looked both softer and thicker, and their wood was dark. The nearest bed had its curtains open and pillows strewn across it, while the sides of the bed were slightly curved, like a nest or a cradle. A window that was obviously enchanted looked out on a scene of the Hogwarts Lake, bright with sunlight. Harry shook his head. It felt as if he had stepped into some fairy tale room, under a tree because it was so dark, but also on the surface because of the light.

"I never said my impressions would make sense," he muttered, when he told that to Malfoy and Malfoy just stared.

"But it shows that you _could _have been at home here," Malfoy said insistently, taking his shoulder and steering him further into the room. Harry heard the door shut, and tensed, but Malfoy didn't spring the joke on him yet. "That you don't need red and gold and beds that don't alter at the whim of the owner for comfort."

"You can alter your beds by willing it?" Harry stared again at the curved bed, and then around at the others, which had their curtains shut, trying to decipher what they looked like. Then he noticed something else.

"Malfoy, why are there only four beds?" he demanded. "You, Goyle, Nott, and Zabini, I get that, but where am I supposed to sleep? Unless that's the joke." He regretted letting the words slip out in the next minute. He wasn't supposed to know about the joke.

Malfoy stepped up close behind him. Harry tensed, wondering which of the beds Malfoy would shove him into so that it could close around him in a trap. Or maybe a pit would just open up in the floor beneath his feet and impale him on illusory spikes. He wouldn't like that, but it was better than standing here and waiting around for the stupid joke to happen.

"I'm tired of you ignoring this," Malfoy breathed, right into his ear. "You know the answers to all these questions if you'll let yourself think about it. Asking them again and again, and pretending that you don't understand, just wastes time."

_Correction, _Harry thought, while his heart-rate doubled and his lungs felt as if they were ten times smaller. _I'd much prefer a pit in the floor to this._

"Excuse me if I don't know every tradition of Slytherin," he snapped. "And excuse me if I don't really know what to do now that I'm here. It'll have to be dramatic enough for everyone else that I just spent the night in Slytherin, because I don't know what else I can do to make it that way."

Malfoy spun him around. Harry started to splutter in outrage—the only person who had ever done that was Snape, and Harry hadn't appreciated it at the time either—but found the spluttering cut off because Malfoy was pressing his lips to Harry's.

_Ah, _Harry thought, mind spinning in so many different directions it was a wonder he didn't fall over from dizziness. This _is the joke. It must be._

Except that Malfoy gave no sign of thinking it was a joke. He moaned and pressed closer, and one hand was running down Harry's back to—

Harry jerked his mouth free. "That's my _arse_, Malfoy," he squeaked. He would have liked to call it some more manly name, but that really was the only word for it, a squeak.

"Mine now," said Malfoy, with a great deal of stupid satisfaction that Harry started to tell him about, so that he would know where to shove it, but he pressed closer again, and Harry staggered back, and there was some more pressing and staggering until eventually they fell through the curtains of one of the beds.

"We could have come here in the first place, if you'd just told me you wanted to," Malfoy murmured reproachfully, and then fastened his mouth on Harry's again. Harry reached up with a trembling hand and shoved ineffectually at the side of Malfoy's face.

It was ineffectual because Malfoy was so strong, of course—much stronger than he'd ever shown himself to be in Quidditch—and pushing Harry down into the bed to try and kill him by suffocation. Not because Malfoy's skin was warm and slightly soft, not at all how Harry had thought it would feel.

And then Malfoy made a triumphant little noise and drove his tongue into Harry's mouth through his lips, which were, unacceptably, _parted_. Harry blamed the stink Malfoy carried around with him, which he would really love if it actually existed.

Harry hadn't had someone kiss him with tongue before. He thought Ginny might have tried, if they hadn't been interrupted every time they were together before the war and she hadn't developed interests in other people after it. Perhaps Cho might have tried, if not for the dead-boyfriend-and-grieving thing. So he didn't have any experience to compare to Malfoy's tongue touching his, and that made it unfair. If he _had _had the experience, then he wouldn't have been overwhelmed. Obviously.

But he didn't, so he was.

He tried to say several wise things. Malfoy's tongue stalled them all. He reached up and curved his hands around Malfoy's skull, gripping his hair. Malfoy's hair was unfairly soft. Harry curved his knees up, and he really did mean to kick Malfoy in the groin. It wasn't his fault that gravity and Malfoy had different ideas, meaning Malfoy fell between his legs instead.

But he didn't just give up and _surrender_. He had no interest in Malfoy's perception of the kiss. He knew all his good intentions, and Malfoy didn't, and that made all the difference.

Finally, even superhuman Malfoy, probably half-descended from merpeople, needed air. He pulled back, and Harry gasped it in for himself. Then he pushed at Malfoy's chest. But his hands were weak because of aforementioned lack of air, and Malfoy caught his hand and turned it over, kissing the back of it as if he was a _girl_.

"Don't do that," Harry said, but his voice was faint and dazed. Stupid lack of air. He frowned and tried again. "Don't do that."

"Of course not," Malfoy said, and gave him a horrible smirk that Harry would remember forever and which would probably be emblazoned on the back of his eyelids when he did, if it didn't kill him first. "You prefer stronger kisses, don't you, my Gryffindor-Slytherin?" He leaned in again.

"No!" Harry said quickly, but once more Malfoy serenely refused to listen and muffled Harry's words with his mouth and tongue. He probably thought he could win all their arguments that way, Harry thought muzzily. Well, he couldn't.

It was totally unfair, how soft his hair was.

Malfoy pulled away and lay down beside him, playing with _Harry's _hair as if it was somehow soft in the same way and looking ridiculously pleased with himself. "We're on my bed," he said. "That's the answer to your question."

"Huh?" Harry rolled his head, panting, to look at Malfoy. His lips felt tender and swollen, and so did his groin. He would have looked down to make sure that it wasn't that visible, but that would have revealed his erection's existence to Malfoy. So he preferred to look into Malfoy's eyes instead. "What question?"

"Your question about why there are only four beds." Malfoy turned and started to pull the sheets down. "You're sleeping here tonight."

"Wait, wait," Harry said. His head was spinning and his legs were weak, but he still knew something wasn't quite right about this. "What?"

"You're sleeping here tonight," Malfoy said helpfully, raising an eyebrow in his direction. His lips were swollen, too, Harry thought, and he stared. He knew Ron and Hermione had to snog quite hard to get them that way. He hadn't thought Malfoy had snogged him—because, of course, he was the innocent victim here—with that much force. "What part of that didn't you understand?"

"We don't," Harry said, and then had to close his eyes, because his head was spinning again and the effort not to look down at his cock was getting impossible.

"I got tired of waiting for you to wake up, and now you're not objecting," Malfoy noted, bundling the blankets around Harry. "I know what you're capable of if you did, including throwing me across the room with a single spell. Lie down and go to sleep. Besides," and he bent right over Harry's ear to whisper into it, "think what a dramatic statement it'll make about Gryffindors and Slytherins getting along when we announce that we're dating."

Enormous, cool relief swept through Harry and seemed to make his cock deflate a little. So Malfoy had only done this because it would make their alliance seem stronger and shame the people who criticized them and thought Slytherins were subhuman. Of course they couldn't be subhuman if the Chosen One slept with one. Right.

He knew that he was so tired because of the potions that Madam Pomfrey had given him in hospital, and that was why he turned over and laid his head against Malfoy's shoulder. That was why he put one arm around Malfoy's shoulders. That was why he went to sleep in the first fucking place, instead of objecting like he should.

Besides, he could always smash things and scream insults at Malfoy's parentage in the morning.


	9. For the Sake of the Strategy

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Nine—For the Sake of the Strategy_

Harry planned things carefully. He acted and moved so silently that Malfoy had no idea what was happening until he awoke from the cold, caused by the loss of the blankets as Harry Levitated him above the bed. And maybe the loss of Harry's body warmth, too, but Harry wasn't going to think about that.

Malfoy blinked slowly awake, then thrashed and struggled as he realized that he was hovering three meters above the sheets.

"Listen to me," Harry said, and watched the way Malfoy's head snapped around towards his voice. At least that showed he could pay attention. That was good. Harry was thinking of things that were good this morning, not things that were bad. "Are you listening?"

Malfoy nodded, then looked ill. Perhaps the blood was rushing to his head. Harry had no sympathy. If Malfoy didn't want to be in this position, he should have considered what he had done yesterday better.

"You snogged me," Harry said. "And then you pulled me into your bed so that you could tell everyone we slept together." His voice was fragile, but he took a deep breath and pulled it more back into that playful tone he had worked so hard to come up with in the first place. "That's a little far to go for the sake of truth, don't you think?"

"But we _did _sleep together." Malfoy sounded calmer than Harry would have thought he could be when he woke to find himself suspended upside-down in midair.

There was another tone in his voice, too, which Harry told himself he was not going to think about lest he should start bouncing Malfoy off the walls and not stop. _See? _he thought. _I'm getting better at not thinking about things._

"Not in the real sense," Harry said. "And you're going to go back out to the Slytherin common room and tell everyone that." Now that he thought about it, he couldn't imagine what he was thinking, following _Malfoy _into the bedroom without any caution. Zabini might have been all right, or Nott or Goyle, who hadn't shown any unnatural interest in Harry's chest. But no, Harry had followed _Malfoy._ Why?

_The potion that Madam Pomfrey gave me, _he reminded himself, and then shook his head and refocused on Malfoy. He couldn't spend this much time reflecting on his mistakes. He had to deal with the consequences instead. "You're going to tell them that," he said. "Aren't you?"

"Tell everyone that I didn't have Harry Potter in my bed?" Malfoy asked. "Tell them that I didn't snog him? But that would be lying."

Harry ground his teeth, and dreamed of casting a spell that would grind Malfoy's teeth, too, until he was picking shattered remnants out of his gums and had to walk around for the rest of the year unable to give anyone else the innocent smile he was using on Harry now. But sadly, that would probably count as assault on a Slytherin, and his oath wouldn't allow him to get away with it.

"Listen," Harry said. "You tell them _exactly _what happened, the way you took advantage of me because of those potions Madam Pomfrey fed me for my injury that made me sleepy and not like myself—"

Malfoy laughed. The sound shut Harry up. Then he told himself that it wasn't because he had wanted to listen to it, it was because it was so sharp and desperate and obviously a sign that Malfoy was finally starting to lose his mind. Well, good. That way, he couldn't come up with any more devious traps for Harry to tumble into.

"Madam Pomfrey never allows a patient to leave the hospital wing until she's certain that they're not suffering from anything, whether that's the potions or their injuries," Malfoy said. "If she let you go, either the potions were out of your body or you were a good enough actor to convince her they were—in which case you fooled me, too, and you don't have an excuse for stumbling into my arms like you were made for them." His voice lowered and got heated.

_Like an argument, _Harry told himself hastily. _Not like a fire. There are other things that can be heated. You don't have to compare them all to flame._

"You're a Potions expert," Harry said loudly. He couldn't sense anyone else in the room. He thought that meant the other boys were gone, but just in case, he was going to make it _absolutely and utterly clear _what a liar Malfoy was. "You must have been able to tell."

"Flattered as the label makes me, Potter," Malfoy said, swaying gently back and forth in the invisible net Harry had conjured for him, "I'm not a Potions expert. Slughorn still knows more than I do. So either you lied to me and yourself so well that I had no reason to think potions were affecting your behavior, or you came with me willingly. You just don't want to admit that, because it would mean that you kissed me and stayed with me because you wanted to. Why are you so opposed to admitting that you want me?"

"Stop it!" Harry shouted, and then paused to let the echoes of the shout die away. He was letting Malfoy get to him. He shouldn't do that. He should just, calmly and concisely and always with one eye out for any of Malfoy's dastardly tricks, explain what was what.

"First of all," Harry said, "you don't want me. You're confused."

Malfoy raised an eyebrow. How did he look so sarcastic when he was hanging upside-down? Harry didn't know, but it must be a special class that Snape had given. _How to Confuse and Irritate Your Enemies With Just an Eyebrow. _"Am I."

"Yes," Harry said, nodding. "We've spent a lot of time together because of the oath lately, and we participated in the attack on the library blockade together. So, because of that, you think that I'm nicer than I actually am. Let me remind you that I didn't _choose _to defend you lot. It was the oath. It's all the oath. When I manage to remove it, we'll go back to being natural enemies."

"The oath doesn't change your bravery, or the fact that you made the oath in the first place because you defended me from Matthieson," Malfoy said, and there was a stupid softness in his voice. Harry told himself not to be afraid of it. It was as soft as water.

Then he thought of how water could wear down rock if it dripped long enough, and hurried ahead. "Then you're in love with me because I'm a big strong hero. Well, you're wrong about me. I'm not all that nice."

"Aren't you?" Malfoy sounded more interested this time, and Harry silently congratulated himself for being so smart. Yes, this was why Malfoy was interested, and Harry would change that interest into disgust before he was done.

"That's right," Harry said. "I've used pretty nasty spells to fulfill the oath. Leaving people dangling upside-down. Making that girl spin in place until she threw up. Sticking people to the walls with webs when they might have been afraid of heights. I'm not the hero that you think I am. Hell, I didn't even defeat Voldemort properly. I just managed to use the Elder Wand against him, which was a total and complete coincidence. You could say that _you_ had as much part in defeating Voldemort as I did," Harry added generously.

Malfoy turned his head. Harry's stomach sank. He was _smiling _at him.

"I know all that," Malfoy said. "And I don't care. None of those people you hurt or killed are ones I cared about."

"But you must care about yourself," Harry said frantically. He could feel that they were hurtling towards something, and he didn't want them to arrive, because crashing into the something would mean that he couldn't struggle anymore. It lurked in the back of his mind like a huge spiderweb. "And right now I'm dangling you above your bed like I dangled those kids I fought. See? _Evil!_"

"I think that you're justifiably upset about what happened yesterday," Malfoy said. His voice was a little breathless, but still calm. "And I reckon I should have thought about that, and realized denial that deep isn't overcome by a few snogs. I'm sorry."

Harry waved his arms. "Malfoy, you're not supposed to _do that!_"

"Why not?" Malfoy spun faster in place now that Harry's magic was responding to his emotions, but he still smiled. Harry stared. What in the world would it take to get that smile to disappear? Maybe Snape had taught a class about maintaining your smile under difficult situations, too. Then Harry told himself not to be ridiculous. Snape didn't know how to smile. "Things have changed. I told you this. They're too big to stop."

"Yes, but you were referring to the bullying of the Slytherins," Harry said quickly. "And that will stop, and there are already people in other Houses helping us, like whatever Gryffindor attacked Everhardt."

"I was referring to more than that," Malfoy said. "Like the process that will result in you calling me Draco someday. I'm already comfortable with thinking of you as Harry, and—"

"_Don't do that!"_ Harry could practically feel the heads in the Slytherin common room lifting and turning towards his bellow.

In the silence that followed, Malfoy's eyes narrowed mischievously. Harry found himself staring in horrified fascination, although he all but knew what was coming next.

"Harry," Malfoy whispered, in a tone that wasn't mocking, the way Harry had expected, but low and sensual. "Harry. Harry. Harry."

There was only one way to handle this, and the way that it made Harry feel as if he had jelly instead of bones. He flicked his wand, and Malfoy dropped to the bed. _There, _Harry thought. _Let's see him say that with his mouth full of pillow._

Malfoy shook his head and raised it, and then focused his bleary eyes on Harry. His smile was still sharp. He opened his mouth as if he was going to whisper Harry's name again, but Harry cut in. He _had _to make Malfoy shut up and listen to him, and maybe reminding him of what was really important was the way to do that.

"We can still use to this our advantage," he said. "Imagine how mad everyone will go when they hear that a Slytherin and a Gryffindor slept together."

One of Malfoy's eyebrows rose, but he seemed to accept the truth for the truth it was, rather than treating it as a distraction from some overriding purpose. "That's true," he said. "But to do that, you have to be willing to admit that I didn't lure you up here under the influence of any potion, and that you kissed me back. Willingly."

"I'll say that publically," Harry said, and glared at him, the same glare that he gave the _Daily Prophet _reporters when they printed a story that wasn't true. It felt good to be back on ground that he understood, instead of feeling that he had to scramble to catch up to Malfoy. "But we'll both know what really happened."

"Yes," said Malfoy. "You yielded to my seduction."

"No, I didn't," Harry said. "You took advantage of me."

Malfoy sighed. "You're perfectly capable of hurting anyone who does that. I took a risk. I would have backed off if you had screamed at me in disgust. But you just stood there as if you were hypnotized, which I took to mean that you don't really know what you want. So I took another chance and kissed you again, and you _responded_. Unless you want to tell me that I attached your hands to my hair by some super-secret web spell," he added sarcastically.

"You probably know one," Harry muttered, but he was bewildered for the moment, because what Malfoy said sounded true.

Then he reminded himself it couldn't be true, because Malfoy only wanted him based on a false perception, and Harry had given in based on false perceptions, and the whole thing was false and anyway only a trick to fool the enemy. Malfoy had even _said _that when they were preparing to go to sleep.

"We'll come up with the tale and maintain it in front of people if we need to," Harry said. "But it isn't real, and it's going no further."

Malfoy stared at him. "You're an _idiot,_" he said. "Why do I want you?"

Harry pointed his wand triumphantly at him. "Yes! That's the right direction! Think it through and you'll realize that it makes _no sense _and that the only reason you want me is because Harry Potter as he exists in your head has taken over from the real one!"

Malfoy put a hand over his eyes. Then he dropped it again and spoke with what Harry assumed had to be a sudden return to sanity—or, more likely, he had realized that his evil plan hadn't worked and never would work. "Fine. But we'll tell everyone that we're together for the sake of the strategy, right?"

"That's right," Harry said, and smiled at him. "You know, Malfoy, you aren't half-bad when you actually _listen _instead of plunging everything in your head behind a wall of massive denial."

"And that's why," Malfoy said, which made no sense, but he leaned forwards to shake Harry's hand. If his fingertips stayed on Harry's palm, caressing, for a moment longer than they should have, Harry understood the reason. Malfoy wanted a false version of him, and it would take him a while to wake up.

In fact, Harry thought, it was a lot easier to smile at Malfoy now that he knew that Malfoy knew the truth. A _lot _easier to smile. He felt as if he could go on doing it all day.

* * *

"Harry! You slept with _Malfoy_?"

Harry sighed. He had wondered how he and Malfoy were going to announce this, and he had quietly told his friends that morning at breakfast, thinking they might come up with ideas. But now that Ron had shrieked that information out, they didn't have to come up with a way to spread the rumor.

Heads turned all over the Great Hall. Harry leaned back in his chair, raised his glass of pumpkin juice in a toast to the stares, cast Malfoy at the Slytherin table what he hoped was a sufficiently melting glance, and then turned to Ron. He had his mouth open, full of half-chewed food, and Harry shivered in revulsion. Hermione was staring at him over the top of her book.

"Yes, I did," Harry said. Really, "sleeping together" was a useful phrase. It said exactly what had happened—because of Malfoy's tendency to let himself be easily fooled—without telling the truth. "We decided that—well, you've seen the way he looks at me." Malfoy had assured him that it was obvious, and everyone would believe it. Well, as long as he didn't mind looking stupid in public when the truth about his obsession with Harry was revealed, Harry decided he could do what he liked.

"But that's," Ron said, and left the sentence dangling, much like the piece of toast that was creeping past his teeth.

"Oh, _honestly_," Hermione said, and picked up a napkin from the table to toss at Ron. "At least catch it if you're not going to eat it!" Then she turned to Harry and stared at him, her eyes so piercing that Harry felt as if he knew how insects on pins felt. "Is that really true? You really felt comfortable enough with a Slytherin to sleep with him? And a boy at that?"

Harry widened his eyes and nodded earnestly. "Yeah, I did." There were so many issues under the surface that the simple words didn't address, but he didn't see why Ron and Hermione needed to know that Malfoy had made a mistake and was slowly changing his mind. They could know that later.

"Oh, Harry," Hermione whispered. "Forgive me. I thought this was all about the oath, but it's bigger than that, isn't it?"

Harry hesitated for a minute—he and Malfoy hadn't discussed what to do if someone got overly enthusiastic about this—but then ended up nodding. After all, Malfoy had used the same phrasing, so he probably wouldn't object to Harry agreeing with Hermione.

Hermione flung her arms around Harry in a hug so hard that it made some of his toast join Ron's in flight. "_Harry!_ I'm so happy for you! You're really committed, and it's not just the oath! I always knew that you were a better person than you've been making yourself sound this year!"

"Er," Harry said, not really knowing what else to say with those last few precious gasps of air. It sounded like she was joining Malfoy in his denial, but he couldn't be sure.

"I've got to go talk to them," Hermione babbled, getting up from the table, picking up her first book, starting to turn away, realizing the second book was still lying on the bench, and then dropping the first as she bent down to pick that one up. "Some of them thought you were just doing it to get in the papers again. They'll have to recognize that it's different now."

"Who?" Harry asked in bewilderment, envisioning Hermione telling Rita Skeeter to write a serious story or else.

"The people who came to me about how you were ignoring their feelings," Hermione said. "Some of them thought that you were just helping the Slytherins to get attention. But you wouldn't sleep with a Slytherin just to get attention! I know you, Harry. You're such a good person. This is true love, and that's bigger than just about anything." She smiled tenderly at him, finally got the books settled in her arms, and bustled away.

Harry stared helplessly after her, half-standing, and then sat back down with a plop and shook his head. Maybe this was a good thing, he told himself. Attacks on Slytherins had been decreasing in the last few days. Maybe they were finally getting through, and Hermione would tell the group of protestors who didn't want to be lumped in with the attackers but also didn't want to help something that would turn them into helpers.

He realized Ron was still sitting there, staring at him, the napkin caught on his lips where Hermione had thrown it. Harry blinked. "Are you all right with this, mate?"

Ron finally picked up the napkin, closed his mouth, and swallowed the bite of toast. Then he leaned towards Harry and whispered seriously, "If you're dating a bloke, then you must have…well, _experience _with blokes, right?"

"Malfoy's the first one I've ever dated," Harry said warily. Once again, he wasn't sure where this was going.

Ron checked over his shoulder both ways, looked up at the ceiling and under the bench, and then leaned even nearer and whispered, "I don't really have a small penis, do I?"

* * *

"I just wanted to let you know that I really did want to help, but I was afraid."

Harry kept a big smile on his face as he nodded, and even patted Robinson on the back when he looked as if he needed it. "I understand." And he did, in one sense. Hector Robinson was a fifth-year Ravenclaw who felt sorry for the Slytherins but was afraid of what his House would say if he stood up.

The problem was, Harry couldn't feel _sorrier _for him than he was for the Slytherins, like Parkinson, who had suffered most directly from the bullying. He really wasn't as nice a person as people thought he was, and his sympathy was limited. Once he had only given it to his best friends; then to a few other Gryffindors and people who suffered from Umbridge; now to the Slytherins. He might not want to hurt people, he might sacrifice himself to save them, but he wasn't going to sit around worrying about people who _might possibly _get their little feelings hurt from some action of his.

Robinson straightened up with a sniffle and gave him a firm nod. "I just wanted you to know. So now I'll come to the defense class that you have set up for the Slytherins, and help teach them." He hesitated. "I'll be welcome, right?"

"As long as you want to help, yes," Harry said. "And as long as you keep in mind that if you attack _anybody_ with more force than is necessary for demonstrating a spell, you'll be out of the class in a minute."

Robinson nodded seriously. He had glasses that made his eyes squint in an earnest manner. Harry had noticed that most of the Ravenclaws did. "I know that. I hope I'll convince a few other people to come with me." He gave Harry one more brilliant smile and then scurried away.

Harry leaned back against his chair in the library and sighed. That was the sixth conversation he'd had today with one of the people Hermione had talked about who wanted to help but didn't want to be accused and didn't want to be blamed and didn't want to be hurt and didn't want to actually _do anything_. At least they sounded like they were doing something now. Most of them had promised to come to the next gathering of the Slytherin defense class tonight, and others had promised to talk to their Housemates about the stupidity of their attacks.

If the attacks continued.

Harry was cautiously hopeful so far. There had been none today, and people had been looking at him with more thoughtful expressions and less anger than usual. More and more of the Slytherins knew the Patronus Charm, although none of them could make a corporeal Patronus like Malfoy or Harry. Others were becoming expert with the Shield Charm. McGonagall had punished two of the Gryffindors who a prefect had overheard making plans for a raid on the Slytherin common room with detention.

Things were working out.

Harry rubbed the oath-scar on his chest. He would have to ask Hermione to start researching whether he would have it forever, and how responsible it might make him for Slytherins who entered the school after he left. The terms of the wording were probably important, so he might have to give her the Pensieve memory. If—

"Harry?"

He looked up, blinking. Romilda Vane stood in front of him, staring at him with her hands clasped near her waist and her mouth locked in a frown. Oddly, all Harry could think of at that moment was how differently she said his name from the way Malfoy said it.

"Yes, what?" Harry asked, when he realized that she wasn't going to get the hint from his silent stare and simply leave.

Vane smoothed her skirt for a moment, and then blurted out, "Is it true that you're dating Malfoy?"

"I slept with him, yes," Harry said. He refused to say anything more or anything less than the absolute truth, in case it gave Malfoy ideas. It was people's fault if they misinterpreted his words.

"That's—that's not fair," said Vane, and her eyes filled with tears. "Not when you knew I wanted you! Not when I tried everything that I could to get you when you were here during your sixth year!"

Harry put his hand over his face. Just what he needed, someone getting jealous over a love affair that didn't actually exist. He thought the imaginary version of him that Vane had in mind, the dedicated and tender lover who somehow never glanced at her, made even less sense than Malfoy's vision of him as a hero.

"Go away, Romilda," he said wearily.

"I just want to know," said Vane, and moved forwards, reaching out with one hand as if she would touch his face. Harry dodged, and her hand scraped the library table. She sniffled again. "Just kiss me. Let me know if he's as good as I am. If I'm better, then you have to date me."

_That makes sense somewhere in her twisted world, I'm certain._ Harry stood up. "I don't want you," he said. "I thought I'd made that clear."

Vane smiled. "But you haven't said you _do _want him! That's as good as an admission." She stepped forwards again.

Harry opened his mouth. He knew he was going to retort, but he didn't know what he'd choose for the substance of the retort. He might not even have chosen it when he felt a strong hand on the back of his neck.

"He doesn't need to say what's absolutely obvious," Malfoy's voice snarled, and then he spun Harry around and into another kiss.

Harry nearly broke free, but then he remembered that they needed to make this look good for Vane. She was an inveterate gossip and would spread the story all over school, whether he stayed pressed against Malfoy or broke free. So he leaned closer and opened his mouth to feed Malfoy his tongue.

Malfoy moaned and opened his mouth in return, and his tongue swept across Harry's. That tasted unexpectedly good. Harry decided that he could stay right here and snog for a little longer when it tasted so good. Vane's mouth would probably taste like moldy cheese.

He pressed Malfoy back against the table, taking control of the kiss, and then giving a little shimmy maneuver with his hips so that Malfoy's legs parted. Malfoy moaned again. Harry hoped that Vane was getting an earful, assuming she was still standing there and hadn't fled somewhere else to indulge in a flood of tears.

Then he rubbed his cock against Malfoy's.

Harry froze, a different kind of tension entirely taking him over and banishing the playfulness. That was—that wasn't _funny_. Malfoy was _hard, _and Harry was on his way to getting there, and suddenly it just wasn't very amusing.

He jumped back and stared at the floor. Luckily, a glance over his shoulder revealed that Vane was gone. He took a deep breath and turned back to Malfoy.

Malfoy took his time about picking himself up from the table. When he sat up, he had more than a faint smirk on his lips. He touched his mouth, then glanced down at Harry's erection and raised his eyebrows.

"It was friction," Harry said quickly. "And your mouth tastes good, and your hair's nice. I told you. That was unfair."

"You think I taste good," Malfoy said, and his voice was soft. "That's all I needed to know, to make up for the disappointment of this morning."

He stood up, cast a _Tempus _Charm, and then added, "Seven minutes until the Defense group begins. I think you should be there."

He strolled away.

Harry sat down hard in the library chair and leaned back, staring at the ceiling. He should think about what had just happened. He should think how horrible it was that Malfoy was falling for some version of himself who didn't exist, and what he could do to discourage the poor boy and point him to someone else who could give him what he wanted.

But all he could really do was think about how good Malfoy tasted, and keep licking at his lips to get the taste back, until he had to run to the Room of Requirement.


	10. A Little Defense and A Little Defensive

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Ten—A Little Defense and A Little Defensive_

When Harry walked into the Room of Requirement, the first thing he noticed was the silence. He paused and stared around, wondering if someone had just cast a spell that impressed all the others so much they'd stopped talking.

Instead, he found their eyes focused on _him_. Harry grunted and clapped his hands. "Yes, yes, I'm here," he said, "the one who gave you this bright idea in the first place. Now, how about paying attention to what you _should _be doing, which isn't giving me any more attention than I've already had today? You never know, it might go to my head and swell it up so much that I'll simply drift away."

That resulted in a few muffled snickers and one or two cautious glances that Harry didn't understand, and the duels began again. Harry walked past the pairs and the groups in front of the Gryffindor and Ravenclaw teachers, offering advice when he could.

"Yes, that isn't the way to perform a Patronus Charm, unless you want it to charge through the wall and alert everyone in the school that we're here."

"If you decided not to abuse them in the corridor, then you don't need to abuse them by yelling at them here, either."

"No, of course you don't say the incantation _Prego_. It's _Protego. _Hear the extra syllable?"

By the time he reached the end of the walk, Harry had started to relax, for two reasons: no one had giggled or joked with him about potentially sleeping with Malfoy, and Malfoy himself was nowhere in the room.

Of course, when Harry considered that more seriously, he had to wonder. Malfoy had started out before him to reach the Room of Requirement. Had someone ambushed him along the way? Perhaps someone like Romilda Vane who considered that Harry was _theirs _to sleep with and Malfoy should have taken a number in line?

Harry tried to catch Zabini's eye and ask him the question, but Zabini was paying attention—ferocious attention, even—to Parkinson and seemed to utterly ignore him. Harry had to stride up right next to him and practically shout in the boy's ear before Zabini would even condescend to turn around.

"Do you know where Malfoy is?" Harry asked. "I last saw him about ten minutes ago, but he's not here. Did he mention going back to the common room or taking an alternate route from the library that might have led him past enemies?"

Zabini cackled—there was no other word for it—and then turned to Parkinson, holding out his hand. "I told you," he said. "I bloody _told_ you. You and your hour! Pay up."

"It was a fool's bet, anyway," Parkinson said, digging a Galleon out of her robe pocket and putting it into Zabini's hand. "Besides, watching the expression on his face when he asked about Draco was worth it." She smirked at Harry past Zabini's shoulder and then raised her wand as if she would continue practicing the Shield Charm.

"You bet on—what?" Harry asked, trying his best to feel lost instead of angry. Other people were pausing to watch him, after all, and he didn't think he should argue with two Slytherins in front of everyone else after spending so much time trying to act as if relations between him and Slytherin House were utterly normal. "How long it would take Malfoy to show up?"

"No, how long it would take you to ask after His Grace the Whinging," said Zabini. "I told Parkinson it would be before half-past, and she thought it would take you a full hour." He smiled at Harry, and it was such a soft and understanding smile that no one would have predicted what he said next. At least, Harry wouldn't. "What's the matter, Potter, are you missing being filled up with love?"

Harry wanted to level his wand. But that wasn't something you did to an ally, even one who had just said something as stupid as this. He wanted to punch Zabini in the face, but that wasn't something you did to someone you were trying to protect, either.

What he did instead was square his shoulders, look Zabini in the eye, and say, "If he goes around by himself and without anyone else to protect him, then I reckon I'll see him when the oath summons me," and turned away.

Zabini muttered something soft behind him, to which Parkinson added her nasty, braying laugh. Harry thought it was very heroic and restrained of him not to turn around and fire a Stinging Hex, which he could do nonverbally so that no one would ever know it was him.

Trying to put Malfoy out of his mind, he agreed to duel with Ron, so that the students could watch a full-on battle between two people who knew what they were doing, instead of between one more experienced person and one less experienced, or between two who were still fumbling their way along. Harry watched as they cleared some floor space, and then waved his hand when people started to cluster into a ring about ten feet away.

"Further than that," he ordered.

Zabini leaned forwards, hands planted on knees, and wagged a finger at Harry. "Now, Potter, you know that His Mighty Paleness would be upset to see you placing yourself in danger. If you fall over and no one's close enough for a quick dash, who's going to catch you?"

Ron snickered, the traitor. Harry turned his back majestically. This, of course, was just another reason for him not to like Slytherins. They were all determined to drag him down even though he'd done nothing over the past few days but help them. Or they were determined to tie him to an altar as a virgin sacrifice to Malfoy. Harry hadn't yet decided if those were opposing goals or not.

But the ring of spectators did back off to fifteen feet, and Harry and Ron bowed to each other, never taking their eyes from each other's faces. Harry hoped that everyone noticed that, since he didn't have much time to talk and explain it right now.

"I'm going to wipe the floor with your arse, mate," Ron whispered. "Nothing personal, but Hermione's watching."

Harry nodded understandingly. "Lucky for you that I have no one to look good in front of."

Ron blinked, then nodded. "Oh, right, because Malfoy isn't here. But you and Zabini looked pretty close. Maybe you can substitute?"

_Just for that, _Harry thought, _I start with this. _And as Ron stepped forwards and turned his head briefly to make sure that Hermione was watching, Harry called out, "_Leviter!_"

Ron yelped as the waving, feathery-soft belt of yellow light caught him around the middle and bounced him up into the air. Of course, he wasn't hurt; he came back down with no bruises and waving his arms. But the minute he touched the ground, he bounced up again and floated towards the other side of the room. Harry smiled. The spell had decreased his body weight and made him unable to land or effectively aim.

Of course, there were ways in which it could be made more fun. Harry waited until Ron was roughly facing him again and then called out, "_Vestio amethystinis!_"

Ron yelped again as the spell created rings of smoke all down his body, rings that blew apart one by one as the magic dissipated. His school robes were gone, and so were the shirt and trousers under them, replaced by layered purple dresses of sheer silk. Harry had made sure to leave his friend _some _dignity. When they were laid on top of each other like that, you couldn't really see through the silk.

Not _really_. Ron flushed and grabbed at his crotch, and if he wanted to do that, then he was welcome. Harry snickered.

Ron finally decided that attacking Harry was more important than preserving his nonexistent honor, and managed to get off a hex that would sit Harry on his arse if it hit. Harry blocked that with a Shield Charm and gave Ron something else to think about with the next spell. "_Perverto!_"

Ron flipped upside-down and hung there with his skirts falling over his head for a moment before he began to slowly revolve, skirts falling back into place and then settling comfortably over his neck once more. The other students were laughing and applauding by now, and Harry turned and winked at them. "You see," he said casually, "you don't need to use spells that hurt someone else in a duel, not if your goal is to get back at them or humiliate them rather than to just survive. It's all a matter of being able to know a lot of spells and combine them, so that you have as many choices as possible."

"I'm not sure that I like to hear you using a spell with the incantation _Perverto, _Harry. I any of your perverted tendencies should be reserved for me alone."

The words went through Harry like the death of Voldemort had. He turned around and saw Malfoy standing next to the door, his arms folded, his gaze nailed on Harry as if he were the only one in the room. Given his words, Harry had expected one of those infuriating smirks, but no, he looked serious to match the supposedly serious tone.

"Give over, Malfoy," Harry said, and then stopped, because damn it, they were supposed to be playing lovers, and he couldn't say half the withering and insulting things he had in mind. He concluded rather weakly with, "You know the incantation isn't like that."

"I don't know," Malfoy said slowly, sauntering forth to the middle of the floor. No one was looking at the spinning Ron now, Harry realized, not even Hermione. Malfoy was the center of attention. _And reveling in it, the poncey bastard. _'It seems to me that you say a lot of things that aren't 'like that,' but that explanation can get overused, don't you think?"

Harry felt his mouth fall open. Now Malfoy was implying that Harry cheated on him, of all things!

Which was _ridiculous._ If Harry was going to have a lover, he wouldn't cheat on them, and if he did, he would be smart enough not to get caught. Malfoy had just insulted his intelligence as well as his ability to keep his cock where it belonged.

"Shut up, Malfoy," he said fiercely. Even if they were dating, he wouldn't have let Malfoy get away with saying something like that, and so he could do most of what he wanted without damaging their little rumor. "You have no idea what you're saying."

"Yes, I do." Malfoy had a peculiar expression on his face, at least as far as the smile went. He was smiling as though he thought he could kick Harry's arse instead of the other way around. He stepped nearer. "Why don't we duel to prove it?"

Harry sneered at him. "So you think winning would prove that you were right? Not that it matters, since you won't win."

Malfoy spun his wand between his fingers, and his smile just got wider and stranger, to the point that Harry thought someone else in the room should have suggested calling Madam Pomfrey. Not that Harry cared if Malfoy died of smile-poisoning, so he wasn't about to suggest it. "You can say that all you like, Harry, but it's impossible for us to be sure of anything until we duel." He paused. "Unless you're afraid."

A chorus of whistles and howls went up from the Gryffindors in the room, to be drowned by the laughter of a much greater number of Slytherins. Harry gritted his teeth. He couldn't let Malfoy insult him in front of other people and get away with it.

On the other hand, he _still _couldn't act exactly the way he wanted to, because their Houses were supposed to be friends now, and _they_ were supposed to be more than friends. His options were limited.

_Unless I just start completely lying, like Malfoy._

Harry nodded as if he'd had a revelation, and said, "You're not usually like this, _Draco_." Malfoy fluttered his eyelashes when Harry said his first name, but Harry wasn't fooled. There was no way that he would be as affected by Harry's speaking his first name as Harry was by Malfoy speaking his. "I think something else is going on. I wonder what it could be?" He looked around the room with unseeing eyes, and then paused when he got to Zabini, staring pointedly at him until everyone was looking in the same direction.

"Yes, of course that's it," Harry said in a musing tone. "I should have seen that before."

"What?" Malfoy looked baffled and defensive now, which was just the way that Harry liked him.

"It seems to me," Harry said, derisively, bringing his gaze back to Malfoy's face with a sudden swing of his head, "that _Blaise _knows just a little too much about you to be comfortable. You've been spending a lot of time together, haven't you?" Then he waited for the ridiculous suspicion to take root in Malfoy's mind, and the minds of the others watching, which was a lot more important, since Malfoy, after all, knew that this was just a ruse.

Malfoy's mouth fell open. "You—what—I _never_!"

"Because I'm so unattractive, is that it?" Zabini piped up, playing right into Harry's hands. Harry thought he might have known he was doing that, and chosen to do it anyway, for the thrill of being part of something so melodramatic. _Or maybe he wants to get back at Malfoy for all the whinging, _Harry thought, unobtrusively stepping away so that everyone could focus on the two Slytherins. "Someone like you could never want to associate with someone as lowly as me?" He clapped the back of his hand to his forehead.

"No!" Malfoy snapped. "Of course not! But I've wanted Potter for years!" And then he turned around and stared at Harry as if _he _was the one who should be embarrassed by that little announcement.

Harry sighed and shook his head. "Your recent behavior is a pretty funny way of showing it."

Malfoy moved nearer and flicked his wand. A bubble of silence sprang into place around them. Harry lifted his eyebrows in reluctant admiration. The spell was a pretty thick one, since it stood up to the immediate attempts of about ten people outside the bubble to dismantle it. Harry nodded. "What do you really want?" he asked.

"I want you to stop endangering this act that we're working to build up here!" Malfoy whispered harshly. He seemed to forget about the silence bubble, Harry thought, or maybe he was paranoid enough not to trust that someone wouldn't break through. "If we start rowing, then your House, at least, might feel free to go back to abusing us."

"You were the one who endangered it first, with that stupid accusation," Harry said. "Look, just _stop _overacting, all right? It's one thing to kiss me when someone is trying to convince me to date her; that'll spread nice rumors about how you're a jealous jerk who defends his rights. But what's the point of coming up and acting as though I make lots of excuses to you to spend time with other people?"

Malfoy's cheeks were bright pink, and his breathing hurried. Harry found himself looking at Malfoy's mouth, and attempts to look elsewhere didn't seem to work. Perhaps Malfoy had cast an Attracting Charm of sorts on his mouth, Harry thought suspiciously.

"You do make those excuses," Malfoy said at last, and his voice was low and vicious and dangerous. "Maybe not in the same way I pretended, but otherwise, yes, it's true. You prefer to spend time with your friends to spending it with me."

Harry just glared at him and waited for the ridiculousness of that suggestion to strike him dead. But Malfoy persisted in staying alive and staring, as if he wanted answers.

"God," Harry said, finding his voice at last. "I have _no idea _why I would prefer spending time with my friends to spending it with someone who, oh, dressed up like a Dementor to scare me and joined the Inquisitors' Squad and let Death Eaters into the school and tried to kill Dumbledore and bullied and attacked me from the first year! Are you _mental_, Malfoy? This is a _deception, _remember?"

"It's more than that for me."

Harry relaxed so suddenly that it was hard to keep his feet. "Of course," he said. "Someone's been introducing a potion into your food. Or they ambushed you just now, when you were missing from the Defense club and other people who could have protected you, and they cast a spell on you. Quick. Do you remember who you were with? Do you have any symptoms of a Memory Charm?"

Malfoy took a step closer. He wasn't smiling, but his eyes and face had that wild look again. "I'm serious. This isn't an act for me. I want you."

"This is worse than I thought," Harry said, and tried to recall all the symptoms he could think of that would mark rare potions. Malfoy wasn't acting like someone under the Imperius Curse, but then again, someone who risked using Unforgivables in Hogwarts in the first place would probably be clever enough to tell him not to act like that.

Malfoy grabbed his arms. Harry reached up to squeeze his shoulders quickly. "I know it's hard. But we're going to cure you."

"Merlin help that thick skull of yours," Malfoy said, in a voice that sounded like a growl, and tugged Harry into another kiss.

This time, it only lasted a few seconds, because Harry prudently stepped on Malfoy's foot before he got lost in the git's mouth. As Malfoy bent down, swearing, Harry Stunned him and then cast a powerful _Finite _that succeeded in getting rid of the bubble of silence.

"He must have been attacked on the way here," Harry said, turning to Zabini and Parkinson. "He was babbling things that made no sense, and his eyes were focused on me in a really weird way. We should get him to Madam Pomfrey."

For some reason—perhaps he thought they had to continue the deception from earlier—Zabini put his hand over his eyes. In this case, Parkinson was the sensible one, nodding and saying, "Of course. Blaise, help me."

Together, they conjured a stretcher for Malfoy and levitated him onto it. Harry was still studying his hands and arms for bruises of any kind, but the attacker appeared to have left no mark. Harry shook his head. _Maybe the attack was entirely mental. What more effective way could they come up with for humiliating Malfoy?_

"Harry," Hermione said in such an urgent voice that Harry paused and turned to her before they left the Room of Requirement.

"Can you get Ron _down_, please?"

* * *

They had made it halfway to the hospital wing, and Harry was watching the shadows for potential people who thought it was a good idea to ambush a tired and angry Harry Potter, when the ambush came from behind him.

He'd heard Zabini and Parkinson whispering together, discussing something that was probably another stupid bet, but he hadn't paid attention. Why should he? He knew they had to be more concerned about Malfoy than he was, since Malfoy was their friend and their Housemate, and it didn't make sense that they would stop him from getting to the hospital wing after all he'd done for them.

So when he found himself hanging in the air, wrapped in ropes, his wand firmly in Parkinson's hand, he just stared at them.

"Yes, yes, very funny," he said, when he noticed the smirk twitching at the edges of Zabini's lips. "But don't you think that this could wait until _after _we've made sure that Malfoy won't be hurt by whatever spell or potion is in him?"

"This is really getting stupid, Potter," Zabini said loudly, as if they had an audience who would judge his performance based on his volume. "You had no right to Stun Draco when he was—I think he was, anyway—trying to make the point that he does want you for you, and it has nothing to do with an act."

Harry blinked and wondered if Zabini was good at reading lips, or perhaps had been given the key to get through the silence bubble spell by Malfoy. "He can say that all he wants, but I know he's just kidding. I don't think the act in general was inspired by a spell, just his weird impulse to come in and confront me in front of everyone. You can't tell me that you aren't a bit concerned by that."

Zabini stepped back, and Parkinson stepped forwards, as if they had agreed they should alternate in confronting him. Harry wasn't upset about it, though. Parkinson was the one who had his wand, and the closer she was, the higher the chance that he might be able to summon it with wandless magic. He started to focus, but Parkinson's words destroyed his concentration.

"Draco did that because he was desperate and you've ignored every one of his advances, Potter. You think he'd agree to brew potions or fight beside just _anyone_? You think he'd take just anyone to his bed?"

"There's no reason for him to go from being an enemy to wanting me," Harry said patiently. "Especially when I didn't do much for him last year, or this year before I saw Matthieson bullying him. Yes, I think he has high standards, though I don't see why you need to defend them. No, I don't think he really wants me."

"He does," Parkinson said. "You were his enemy, yes, but also his touchstone. He dreamed of you coming for him last year and saving him, when there was no one else he could turn to, and in the end you actually _did_. That sort of thing makes a powerful impression. I think he would have been content to court you slowly, but he saw that wouldn't work thanks to the density of your skull. So he stepped it up."

Harry stared at her. He knew his mouth was hanging open, and he didn't care. How was it possible that he knew Malfoy better than his best friends did?

"He wouldn't like me rescuing him," he said. "He would hate me worse than ever. He has too much pride for anything else."

"He doesn't have that much," Zabini said, his voice rising in what sounded like surprise. "Why else do you think that he gets his way by whinging? He couldn't do that if pride was more important to him than having what he wants. And what he wants is you."

"Well, maybe I don't want him," Harry said, and tried not to think about the various acts of snogging he and Malfoy had engaged in.

Zabini and Parkinson exchanged glances, arguing silently over some issue that Harry couldn't fathom. Then Parkinson nodded, and Zabini stepped forwards grimly.

"We wouldn't do this if we had a choice," he said. "We'd just leave Draco to fight it out himself and be amused when you eventually succumbed. But the longer you go on resisting, the more likely we are to be subjected to an attack of whinging. So." He waved his wand, and Harry dropped to the floor, his bonds loosening.

At the same time, Malfoy sat up on the stretcher and swung his legs to the floor, staring at Harry.

The next moment, he had trapped Harry against the wall with his body and was breathing against his lips.

Harry started, then stared past his shoulder at Zabini and Parkinson. They _wanted _to watch Malfoy snog the life out of him? Harry imagined that it would be disgusting for most people who weren't Malfoy and him.

_Wait, _he thought a minute later, catching the traitorous thought that was trying to sneak away from his notice. _For me, too._

But Malfoy didn't snog him. Instead, he simply breathed against Harry's lips, and then against his face and cheeks and ears, moving his head gently up and down, while never varying the posture of his hands and chest and arms and legs that kept Harry expertly pinned. He sighed into Harry's hair. He brought his mouth so close to Harry's chin Harry was sure he'd kiss it, but he didn't. He spent a long time making sure that the curve of Harry's earlobe was hot and moist, to the point Harry thought Malfoy must know it better than he did.

Harry tried to resist. He really did. It wasn't like he had potions in his system this time, although he did have his concern about Malfoy, and there was an audience, and there wasn't the taste of Malfoy's mouth to distract him.

But his head fell back against the wall, and his eyes shut, and he moaned, weakly. It was as though Malfoy had converted the air he breathed into pure pleasure for Harry's body. He didn't press closely enough for Harry to feel it if he was erect, but he must have noticed it when Harry hardened.

Then he stepped back.

And Harry betrayed himself, reaching after him before he thought about the implications of the move.

Malfoy smiled. It made some of the coldness in his eyes melt, and it softened the contours of his face, and Harry had to admit that maybe some other things about him besides his mouth and his hair were attractive.

"There," he said, in a tone of quiet authority. "I think I've done enough. You can't ignore that, because you were the one who wanted _me _just then. I'm done chasing you. Come to me when you think you can handle it."

And he turned and walked away, Zabini and Parkinson hurrying after him, so that Harry was the one who was alone in the corridor.

Harry closed his eyes and wiped his mouth, less to get rid of the warmth he could still feel than to get rid of his own drool. Questions and answers to the questions were exploding in his mind. Why did Malfoy want him? Because he was out of his mind and Harry was a hero. Was the wanting genuine? Yes. Did Harry want him back? Yes. Was it crazy? Yes.

But the most prominent question had no answer.

_What the fuck am I going to do?_


	11. A Confused State of Affairs

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Eleven—A Confused State of Affairs_

Every time Harry thought he understood something about how the world should be, it changed on him.

He'd thought things would be different after the war, more peaceful, with no one deciding to attack anyone else for at least a few years. That had been wrong.

He had thought, if it _was _going to happen, that the violence would come from people who were Death Eaters or Slytherins, upset that they hadn't won the war, or that Harry still existed. He'd expected attacks on _him_ specifically. Why not? He was the one who had killed Voldemort and disappointed all their hopes. Attacking random Gryffindor students wouldn't have made sense. Why did attacking random Slytherin students?

He had been wrong about that.

He hadn't thought much about dating—he was trying to appreciate being alive this last summer before anything else—but he had thought about dating Ginny. And then she turned out not to be interested. So sometimes he had fantasies when he wanked, and that was about it. It wasn't as though he _wanted _to be deeply committed right now, on the brink of marriage the way it sometimes seemed Ron and Hermione were.

That had been wrong.

But he still didn't really know _why _he had been wrong.

_I mean, _he thought as he sat in the Gryffindor common room that night, frowning at the fire, and ignored most of the questions directed at him by the Gryffindor girls who wanted to gossip, _why would anyone think that I would be? Who would have anticipated that Malfoy wants to date me, for some weird reason?_

Hermione snapped her fingers in front of his eyes. Harry jumped and then sat up, trying to look as though he had anticipated that even as he gave Hermione a dirty look. Hermione rolled her eyes in response and then dived right into the question she'd probably been dying to ask him.

"What happened in the hospital wing, Harry?"

Harry shook his head. "We didn't make it to the hospital wing. It turned out that Zabini and Parkinson were angry at me for Stunning Malfoy, and they brought him back to life and yelled at me in one of the corridors. Then Malfoy said that he was angry at me, too, and walked away with them. They should be safe enough on their way back to Slytherin," he added, because he thought Hermione was worrying about that.

Hermione sighed impatiently. "_You_ came back looking as though someone had just taken your puppy away." Over Harry's incoherent protest, she leaned forwards and stared into his eyes. "What happened? Did you have a row?" And then she suddenly stopped, and nodded understandingly. "Of course. You look just the way Ron does when I tell him that I want him to go away and stop bothering me so I can read."

"I don't look like that!" Ron said.

At the same time, Harry flushed and stayed silent. It would be good to let Hermione think it was a lovers' quarrel, he told himself. That would account for everything and also give him an excuse not to talk about it, which he didn't _want _to. How in the world was he supposed to tell his friends that Malfoy did genuinely want him, and Harry might want him back? (Harry didn't think he was ready to commit to anything beyond "wanting" yet. Lust was easy to understand; anything softer and warmer made him want to cast Freezing Charms on himself until it stopped).

Hermione continued to try to tease the information out of him until he went to bed, but at least she didn't get upset when Harry didn't answer. To Harry's shock, though, Ron tried as they were climbing into bed.

"_Did _you argue with Malfoy, mate?" he whispered. Harry started to open his mouth, but Ron shook his head. "Not the thing you told us about. Something else? Something…intimate?"

Harry rolled over and eyed Ron, trying to figure out what in the world he was saying and why he was interested in this. "You could say that," he hedged. Maybe his friends wouldn't be surprised out of their minds when he revealed his attraction to Malfoy if he could prepare them a bit first.

"Ah," Ron nodded. He leaned over to the point that he almost fell out of his bed and whispered, "If he has the bigger cock, you ought to let him top first, mate. That way, you'll get used to it."

Harry knew his mouth was open, giving Ron an unattractive view of his tonsils, but maybe that was a good thing at the moment, considering how unpredictable Ron was becoming. He might just fling himself at Harry and suggest they compare penis sizes next. "Where did you learn that?" he demanded.

Ron promptly turned red enough that he seemed to blaze like a beacon even in the dark. "I, um, nothing," he stammered. "It's n-not meant to be anything in particular. I mean, I might have picked it up from Oliver and blokes like that. Or, you know, the twins used to t-talk about it. N-nothing. I mean, n-nowhere." Then he turned over and buried his head beneath a pillow the way that Harry wished he could do.

Harry stared at his back for a few moments more, then turned around with a snort and flopped into bed, shutting his eyes.

No wonder that the world didn't make sense and didn't go the way he would have thought it would after the war. No _one _around him made any sense after the war, either. Next, Hermione would probably declare that books were overrated and she wanted to learn her subjects from Harry's and Ron's notes instead.

_But there is something I could ask Hermione to do, _Harry thought drowsily as he closed his eyes. _Research how long this bloody oath is going to last, based on the wording I used and other oaths like it._

* * *

Malfoy was holding court at breakfast the next morning, surrounded by what looked like half the Ravenclaw table as well as the Slytherins. After a few minutes of staring, Harry figured out they must have heard of the Defense class from Robinson and the other Ravenclaws who had attended, and so wanted to talk with the Slytherins both about the spells and other ways to use those spells.

It made sense. Malfoy was the main one talking, but not the only one. Harry ought to be grateful to have a small island of sense in the middle of a world so strange and changing so rapidly.

He _ought _to have felt that way.

But his feelings had joined the rebellion of things, and so he ate with a sour sensation in the back of his throat and left breakfast as soon as he could. When he got outside the Great Hall and was able to take a few gulps of clean air, he felt better, and his mind showed him the image that was burned into his brain, the image that had made him have to leave breakfast in the first place.

Robinson leaning over and putting his hand on Malfoy's arm, looking at him with big, worshipful eyes. Malfoy leaning towards him and nodding as he listened intently to words Harry couldn't make out.

_You would have thought he'd forgotten Robinson never did anything to help them, _Harry thought resentfully, scrubbing at his face, _and only showed up for the first time last night._

So. He felt jealousy over someone else male touching Malfoy. That was helpful in clarifying his feelings and pointing out that he hadn't imagined them and they probably weren't only lust, but not helpful in anything else.

How was he going to get Malfoy?

Harry frowned up at the ceiling of the entrance hall. He wasn't a genius at anything except the way to combine Defense spells, so coming up with some clever plan to woo Malfoy, the way Hermione would have, was out. (Although, come to think of it, maybe Hermione wouldn't have been able to do it, either, given the way she'd danced endlessly around Ron. That made Harry feel a _bit_ better).

He could march up and kiss Malfoy in the middle of the Great Hall, but would Malfoy like that? He might look at Harry with cold eyes and say that it was vulgar to kiss in front of so many people.

He could ambush Malfoy in a hidden corridor and do the same thing, but Malfoy would probably be upset then that they didn't have _enough_ of an audience.

He could write some kind of blazingly romantic love letter, but Malfoy could as easily mock it. And anyway, that part of the plan depended on Harry being blazingly romantic in the first place, and also a good writer, which he wasn't.

Harry groaned. _Malfoy's taught me to think in impossibilities, but that's no help when I want a solid idea._

He started to go to Potions, but paused when he heard a familiar voice from behind him. It was hopeful, which it shouldn't have been, and although he didn't _think _it was one that would make him have to do something about the oath, it depended on who she was talking to.

"So, I thought…since you're the second most handsome bloke in school after Harry, you might let _me _date you."

Harry turned around slowly and peered over his shoulder, trying to make it look as though this was something he did every day and utterly unremarkable.

Romilda Vane stood in front of Malfoy, who was leaning against the wall outside the Great Hall and regarding her with a dumbfounded expression. Harry was grateful to her that he'd got to see that, at least. It helped to know that he wasn't the only one suffering from such confusion.

"Because Potter didn't want to date you," Malfoy said at last, slowly, as though he assumed the speed of the words had something to do with their meaning, "you think that _obligates _me to give you a chance?"

"Not obligates!" Vane said, sounding horrified. She made a little motion as though she was catching something and throwing it away. "Never that! I would never use that word! I just thought you might consider it." She ducked her head and then brought it slowly up, eyelashes fluttering in a way she probably imagined was cute.

"_No_," Malfoy said, and put so much rejection into the word that surely not even someone like Vane, Harry thought, could mistake it for anything less than what it was.

He was wrong. Harry was glad that there was someone in the world who could make him feel less dense. Vane leaned forwards and cooed, "But you haven't even kissed me. You haven't touched me. You don't know. I might be the one you've desired all your life, and what kind of life are you going to lead if you don't become involved with me?"

Malfoy's lip curled. He reached out as if he would grab Vane's shoulder and push past her. Harry looked about for some sign of Zabini and Parkinson, or Goyle, who followed Malfoy around like a shadow these days, but didn't see them.

Vane seized Malfoy's hand when it touched her shoulder and kissed the back of his hand, her expression fervently adoring.

Harry went out of his mind.

Literally. His mind seemed to retreat to the back of his skull and become a small, whimpering thing, while his body seized control and propelled him across the entrance hall with a few quick strides. He grabbed Vane and dragged her away from Malfoy so hard that she didn't even have time to shriek.

Then he turned and planted her in front of him, so that she would have no choice but to see every expression on his face, every line of his scowl and every angry tooth he was showing in his sneer. He didn't place his wand against her throat. He didn't think he needed it. She was frozen just from his expression, staring up at him with her mouth slightly open.

"Draco Malfoy is dating me," Harry said. All his words were clear, and loud, and people who were coming out of the Great Hall paused and looked over their shoulders. "He's _only_ dating me, and will _not _accept your invitations to kiss you or touch you 'just in case.' He will not be accepting any chocolates that might be laced with love potions. Do you _understand_, Vane?"

Vane made a few gulping noises, but Harry suspected that trying to make her speak after such a close encounter with someone she desired might be impossible. The message was more for other people, anyway.

But _this _one was just for Malfoy, Harry thought, as he let go of Vane and spun around to face Malfoy. The git had no expression on his face, as if thought this was just another moment of play-acting and Harry would come up with some excuse not to kiss him.

"I'm not that great an actor," Harry told him, answering the thought, and then drew him into a kiss.

It wasn't as violent as their other ones. Harry just grabbed his shoulders, not his face, and he didn't push him flat against the wall except on accident, and he didn't openly rub his knee between Malfoy's legs the way he would have liked to. But he did use plenty of tongue, and he didn't conceal his moans, and he did close his eyes when the sensation became too much.

Malfoy's mouth tasted just as good as it ever did. His hair was just as soft. And Harry had to admit that Malfoy probably hadn't designed these things on purpose to entrap and snare Harry; they were just the way he was.

Harry kissed as long as he could without needing to draw back for air, stroking Malfoy's cheeks with his tongue and trying not to think about their audience. The audience didn't _matter_. That was the whole point. He had come after Malfoy when he had seen Vane trying to touch him, rather than because there were people in the entrance hall right now. That would have to be enough.

He stepped back and opened his eyes.

Malfoy blinked and then touched his lips as if he thought Harry's were still attached. He gasped in deeply, nodded, and said, "That will do for a beginning. Come back when you think you can do better."

Then he brushed past Harry and walked towards Potions with a straight and steady stride, as if the kiss hadn't affected him at all. And Harry couldn't remember now if he'd felt Malfoy's erection; most of his attention had been on the git's mouth.

Harry loosed a short but intensely satisfying scream. He didn't care whether that would make the students around him think he was mad. They probably already thought he was for dating Malfoy, or dating a Slytherin, or kissing him in the middle of the entrance hall where everyone could see, or putting up with Romilda Vane for that long.

There were all sorts of things they could think, and increasingly, Harry was finding them unimportant.

He did find Vane still standing behind him when he turned around. Harry stared wearily at her, not wanting to deal with the load of bollocks that he knew she was going to say next. "What?" he snapped.

"I was wrong," Vane said, in a weak but clear voice. "You're both better kissers than I am, and each of you is the only one that the other should be with. Um. Excuse me. I have to go…do something."

She hurried away with an odd limp. Harry stared after her, wondering if he'd hurt her, or Malfoy had, and didn't realize it.

Then he saw the way her skirt swung as if it was soaked, and a different cause came into his mind, enough to make him shudder violently and have to lean against the wall as he went to Potions.

* * *

It _wasn't working_.

Harry had tried standing around outside the Slytherin common room door and waiting for Malfoy to go in or out, or getting someone to carry a message to him. That didn't work. Malfoy only walked faster when he saw Harry, pretending he didn't see him and hiding behind the shelter of his friends. The people Harry asked to carry messages pretended not to hear, either, and Harry couldn't hex them the way he wanted to because of this bloody oath.

He had tried sending a letter to Malfoy that apologized and asked for a date. Malfoy had ripped it up while staring at him, mouthed the words, "Not good enough," and then turned his back with magnificent calm.

He had tried speaking to Malfoy in classes, in the corridors, in the Great Hall, near the Quidditch pitch after practice. Malfoy turned his back each time and busied himself with the cauldrons, or his books, or his broom.

He had tried simply catching Malfoy and snogging him senseless again, but Malfoy had melted out of his arms as if he were made of air and floated away.

_So, _Harry thought on the sixth day, when he'd been distracted for most of the Slytherin defense class watching the blond git on the other side of the room, _I reckon that he wants to make me suffer as much as he did when I was ignoring him. Fair enough._

_But if he thinks I'm going to wait around for him for six years or however long he suffered from not having my attention, he'll have to think again._

Harry turned his head away and started paying attention to the people he was actually trying to teach, a group of fifth-year Slytherins who were having unusual trouble with the Patronus Charm. He nodded to the girl in the middle, a Susan Sage, who was frowning at her wand as if it was the source of the problem. "You have to think of a memory that's sufficiently happy," he told her. "A memory that only makes you feel content or irritated does no good at all."

"But that's what I was _thinking _of!" Sage glared at him from between two strands of sandy hair that seemed to fall in between her eyes no matter what she did.

"You told me that you were thinking of a time your sister got punished and you didn't," Harry said. "That's not strong enough, and you can see that because it doesn't work. So try something else."

"That's the only happy memory I have," Sage muttered, and looked as if she was on the brink of folding her arms and stomping away. Harry would be glad to let her go if she _did _fold her arms, but she hadn't done it so far, and he would keep on trying to reach her until she did.

"I know that's not true," one of the other fifth-years said. Harry thought his name was Geoffrey Freewell. "What about when you took a broom up for the first time? You told me that _that _was your happiest memory."

"Shut up, Geoffrey, that was private," Sage said, but she did look a little pleased that someone had remembered. Harry shook his head. The Slytherins kept insisting that they didn't need other people and were happier when others didn't pay them any attention. But they were hurt by indifference almost as much as insults. Harry didn't see how everyone around them could be _expected _to know that they needed encouragement when they said they didn't.

He cast another glance at Malfoy, then remembered what the fuck he was doing and refocused on Sage. "Try it now," he said.

She frowned, face twisting up, and waved her wand while shouting, "_Expecto Patronum!_"

For a second, Harry thought it wouldn't work because she hadn't used the right wand movement. Then a shimmering silver shape manifested next to her wand and drifted up until it was right in Sage's face.

"An _eel_?" she asked, staring at it. "Why did it have to be an eel?"

Harry laughed. "We don't get to choose what our Patronus is. But see if you can make it swim to the end of the room and come back to you, and later we'll try to make it carry messages." That was the best way, he'd found, to start small. Several Slytherins had got frustrated not because they couldn't create a Patronus but because it wouldn't do everything they wanted it to on the first try.

Sage nodded and then stuck her wand out in front of her. The eel shot away to the far side of the room, swimming in circles, and looped back to her, tilting its head a little before it vanished.

Harry applauded along with several other people, and turned to help the boys and girls in the group who still hadn't produced a Patronus. Halfway through trying to make Freewell realize that _he _had to use a happier memory, too, he became aware of someone's gaze resting heavily on him. He finished what he was saying and then casually turned his head.

Malfoy was watching him directly and openly for the first time since the night when he'd walked away. Harry nodded to him, not sure whether to read this as a hopeful sign or not. It might be, but he'd thought Malfoy letting Harry snog him last week was a hopeful sign, too, and it hadn't been.

Malfoy started and whipped around as if he hadn't realized he was staring, and _someone might see_. Harry rolled his eyes and carried on with his teaching.

* * *

"You have to do something, Potter."

Harry sighed. Once again, he'd been cornered by Zabini and Parkinson as he left the Slytherin defense club. Malfoy had gone on ahead, and Harry had been grateful. Maybe tomorrow he would come up with some other way to get the git to pay attention to him, but for now, he wanted an evening where he didn't have to think about him or the impossibility of making him _look_.

"You have to," Parkinson said, with a sharp nod of her head. "He's whinging again, and you have no idea how unpleasant it is to listen to."

Zabini clapped a hand to his chest and leaned back against the wall, his head tilted up and his eyes rolling back in his skull. "Why don't I have my Haaaarry yet?" he wailed. "Why isn't he coooooming?" He lowered his head to fix Harry with a demanding gaze. "It's intolerable."

"You can tell him I'm coming plenty of times, in plenty of different ways, just without him," Harry mumbled.

Parkinson laughed, the first time Harry had ever heard a sincere sound from her that didn't have to do with mocking him. "We could tell him that, yes, if we want to get whinged at even more," she said.

"I don't know what the fuck else to _do_," Harry said. "If he ignores me every time I try to make a move, what am I supposed to do? Catch him in some kind of trap and then refuse to let him go until he agrees to date me?"

"You can do more of what you were doing tonight," Zabini said. "Helping us. He likes to see that."

"But it's not enough to make him even say something to me," Harry said. "It won't make him stop whinging. What else do you suggest?"

Zabini looked briefly helpless, and exchanged a look with Parkinson. Her laughter had subsided, and she was shaking her head a little. She opened her mouth as though she would give a suggestion.

Harry never knew what it would have been, which irritated him when he thought about it later.

He saw a movement out of the corner of his eye, and the scar on his chest lit up like a firework at the same moment. So he did what came to him as most natural, and stepped in front of Parkinson and Zabini, turning to face the attacker.

He had time to see a face he wouldn't have expected before a spell that must have already been underway caught him in the chest. It felt like a kick from a hippogriff, and he heard ribs snap. He waved his wand and raised a wordless Shield Charm over Zabini and Parkinson even as he sagged to his knees.

Then the person cast again, and Harry knew, as fire consumed the side of his neck and his face, that this was going to be _bad._


	12. Now That Harry Knows What He Wants

Thank you again for all the reviews! This is the last chapter of _Water from a Stone. _I hope that you've enjoyed it.

_Chapter Twelve—Now That Harry Knows What He Wants_

Harry knew there was pain waiting just outside the tight little bubble of darkness and silence enclosing him. He refused to wake up and face it. No one could _make _him. He was tired of being a hero, and so people could forget trying to force him to be one and just leave him alone.

But someone prodded his shoulder with a thin, bony finger, and kept prodding. Harry groaned. He couldn't _believe _it, but they were waking him up. He had slept through Dudley pounding down the stairs at Privet Drive. Obviously, he had lost his tolerance for things like that as he grew up. Harry wasn't sure that increased maturity and magical power was worth the loss.

"Potter," a voice breathed into his ear, and the bony finger came into play again.

Harry recognized the voice. And it triggered reflexes in him that he had almost forgotten.

He rolled over, his arms flailing. The finger came back, joined by a whole ring of them, closing around his right arm as if it was imperative that he keep still. Harry grunted in satisfaction and cast the spell that was at the top of his mind. He didn't know if he still had his wand in his hand, but as long as he didn't _know _that, then he could pretend he did, and the magic would probably still work.

The voice cried out, startled, but Harry didn't care, because by that point his spell had worked and the handcuffs had manifested. One cold metal bracelet closed around his wrist and the other closed around the other person's wrist. Harry smiled stupidly into the pillow and wriggled his face deeper into it.

"Potter, _let me go_." The voice was upset. Harry liked hearing it that way, though he couldn't remember why at first. Then he remembered, and nodded. It was because the voice's owner had upset him so often in the last week.

"No," Harry said. "Not until you stop ignoring me."

"I can't understand what you're saying when your face is buried like that," the voice sneered in disgust, and Harry had to admit that it had a point. He braced himself to encounter the pain and rolled over.

The pain was waiting and pounced on him. Harry gasped. His skin on his face and his chest throbbed and felt tight and stretched and hot, as though the oath-scar had been duplicated everywhere. He blinked, and winced when the light seemed to cut into his eyes. But he could still see things at close range, so he focused on the person standing beside his bed.

Malfoy glared at him. His left wrist was chained to Harry's right one, though the chain had got messed up and twisted around when Harry rolled over. There was a heavy redness around his eyes that pleased Harry immensely. It meant he had been crying or angry, and so now he knew how Harry felt.

"You can't do this," Malfoy said flatly. "You have no right to keep me prisoner. Let me go."

"And _you_ have no right to act as though I've permanently offended you," Harry retorted. "If you expect me to wait six years for you, then you're out of luck. But you kept running away like the cowardly little bitch you are before I could say anything. So I'll keep you here until you make up your bloody mind. And if you decide not to have me, the first thing I'm going to do is go off and fuck a blond bloke who looks like you, but has a much better temper."

Malfoy's face wavered between several different expressions. Harry watched him critically, wondering which one would turn out to be dominant.

"_Mr._ Potter, what are you doing awake already?" said a shocked voice behind them, which rather interrupted the moment. Madam Pomfrey swooped down on Harry, and then paused when she saw their handcuffed wrists. "Is this a joke?" she asked suspiciously.

"No, just a precaution," Harry said, and sat up, ignoring the way that it pulled on Malfoy's shoulder. "What happened, Madam Pomfrey?" Talking was starting to hurt, and Harry licked his lips. They were broken and bleeding, and he blinked, surprised that he hadn't noticed that before now.

Madam Pomfrey paused, looking back and forth between him and Malfoy as though she still hoped for an explanation that made sense, and then too obviously gave up and settled for a headshake. "Your attacker—whose identity we still don't know—" Harry started to open his mouth and then decided he could say who it was after the catalogue of his injuries "—burned you. The spell was meant to burn the skin off layer by layer, and thus inflict permanent damage. Luckily, thanks to the quick actions of Miss Parkinson and Mr. Zabini, it only burned off one. You'll have some pain for a while, but it's nothing that can't heal."

Harry nodded. "Thanks. And I did see the attacker's face, by the way. It was Theodore Nott."

"_What_?" Malfoy snapped. "But he's a Slytherin! He would have no reason to attack you! You must be mistaken."

"Oh, dear," Harry said softly, turning to him. "It sounds as though someone is choosing House loyalty and House blindness over seeing the truth of attacks that were happening right in front of him and that he could have stopped."

Malfoy turned a lovely shade of red. Really, with the way his hair was clinging to his forehead, Harry thought, and the sweat running down his face, he might just have rolled out of bed or the shower. Harry didn't even care if Malfoy saw his erection this time. They might not be able to do much about it when they were in hospital, but they would later.

"You're sure, Mr. Potter?" Madam Pomfrey asked. "Using this curse is a very serious offense, and will probably result in Mr. Nott's expulsion from the school."

Harry rolled his eyes. "I don't care if his cowardly little arse is expelled, to be honest. And yes, I saw him up close. Zabini and Parkinson could probably confirm the same thing, if they weren't keeping silent out of loyalty to their Housemate." He turned to Malfoy and gave him another hard stare, one that he didn't really have to feign. If Zabini and Parkinson had beaten Nott off but still didn't want to tell anyone, then that meant Harry's actions in their defense really didn't matter after all. "I think the handcuffs were a mistake, don't you? I think this whole bloody _thing_ was a mistake, if you still prefer to think that Slytherins can never do any wrong."

"It just doesn't make any _sense_," Malfoy said, a plaintive bleat that Harry wanted to laugh at. Malfoy lived in a world where people would randomly attack Slytherins and a Dark Lord could arise and be practically ignored by the Ministry, and he expected things to make _sense_? "Why—why would he attack someone who was helping us? And why couldn't you have stopped him in time?" he added, seeming to recover some of his superiority.

"Hermione's been doing some research on the oath for me," Harry said, never looking away from Malfoy's face. "The oath prevents me from moving as fast as I should or casting too many nasty spells at the people I'm sworn to defend. With someone else, I probably would have managed to catch the curse in time, but not when it's a Slytherin."

"That's—ridiculous," Malfoy said, and his face worked as though someone had just forced him to swallow a large lemon.

"Yes," Harry confirmed, with a sad nod. "I'm ridiculous. The oath I swore is ridiculous. It's ridiculous that I should have to defend you lot, when I'm only the one who ends up in the hospital wing again and again."

"Mr. Potter," Madam Pomfrey interrupted, with a warning look at Malfoy. "You're sure it was Mr. Nott?"

"Yes," Harry said. "He's probably also the one who cast the curse that caused my internal bleeding and the huge bruise in the middle of my back." He didn't look at Malfoy, but he felt his flinch through the chain. "As for why he did it, you'd have to ask him. But I'm willing to give testimony that it was him, and Zabini and Parkinson _should _be as well." If they weren't, Harry thought, he would go around and "persuade" them that they should.

"But the other attacks were really Gryffindors and Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs against Slytherins," Malfoy said, as though he had to convince himself.

Harry stared at him impatiently. "I never said that they weren't. This has nothing to do with the other attacks. We only _thought _it did, which is why it made it hard to figure out in the first place. But I'm sure Nott was behind both of the most dangerous attacks on me, the only ones where I didn't come along and intervene in some other situation that was already happening." He watched Malfoy's face closely as he added, "Tell me, does Nott have an Invisibility Cloak?"

Malfoy's lips twisted. "I can't tell you that."

"But you'll tell the Headmistress," Madam Pomfrey said threateningly, and then began to bustle in the way that meant she wanted the visitor out of the hospital wing. "Take off the handcuffs, Mr. Potter."

"No," Harry said. "Where he goes, I go, until he makes up his mind about what kind of stupid arse he's going to be about dating me."

Malfoy stared at Harry with his mouth open. Harry looked back, bored and impatient. What else did Malfoy expect from him? They had already settled it that Harry wasn't going to chase after him forever, and that Malfoy had been stupid for ignoring Harry's attempts to talk to him in the first place. Why would he expect things to change after this little conversation, except in a direction that more favored Harry's way of doing things?

"Mr. Potter, you're in no condition to get out of bed," Madam Pomfrey began, predictably.

"I can't look _that _bad," Harry said. "Otherwise, Malfoy would have been fainting and screaming about being chained to such an ugly creature, rather than getting upset because I want someone who tried to kill me expelled."

"_What_," Malfoy said, as if he thought those two things weren't at all comparable. Harry looked at him, but he said nothing interesting, so he went back to Madam Pomfrey.

"I want Nott charged, or whatever it is that they do, and expelled as soon as possible," he said. "Are you going to conjure a stretcher for me to get there? I think it would be more comfortable for me, and that way Malfoy could walk beside me and go exactly as fast as the stretcher does, without having to readjust his pace to mine."

Madam Pomfrey opened her mouth, peered at Harry, and then seemed to decide—correctly—that he wasn't going to be persuaded otherwise. She nodded, waved her wand, and conjured the stretcher.

"This is an outrage," Malfoy said loudly. "I demand that you release me from this humiliating imprisonment, _right now._"

"She can't end the spell," Harry said. He knew he sounded smug. He didn't care. There was still a sharp ache in him, which he wasn't about to admit even under torture, that Malfoy cared more about his Housemate than he did about Harry. But then again, that made Harry have more of an incentive to keep him close, because an answer that confirmed that would still be more of an answer than he had now. "Only I can. A little charm that Hermione taught me last year ensures that."

"Best to put up with it for right now, Mr. Malfoy," Madam Pomfrey murmured, floating Harry from the bed to the stretcher. The chain between the handcuffs pulled tight, and Malfoy came along, stumbling. Harry smirked at him and stretched out full-length on the stretcher, so that he could relax and still give Malfoy room to move. "When you see the Headmistress, she may come up with a better solution."

"No, she won't," Harry said. "The charm will still hold."

Madam Pomfrey's sigh followed them out the door of the hospital wing and got lost somewhere among the corridors and steps as they headed to McGonagall's office.

* * *

Malfoy didn't say anything for the first part of the journey. He still had that sour look on his face. Harry considered him for some time, his head tilted to the side on the pillow, and then said, "You know, you can be free of me easily."

For some reason, Malfoy didn't spring at that chance. He walked a few steps before he asked in a flat voice, "How?"

"Tell me that you care more about Theodore Nott than you do about me," Harry said. "Tell me that a Slytherin who attacks a Gryffindor is still a Slytherin and so a friend, and that matters more than anything you like about me or anything I did for your House. Tell me that, and the chain is severed."

Malfoy spun around to face him, then staggered because the handcuffs had interfered. "You know I don't feel that way," he said. "What the fuck else can I _do _to show that I want you and you're important to me?"

_At last, _Harry thought, his heartbeat making his chest vibrate, but he maintained his calm, cool gaze and his stern frown. "Well, it sure seems like that. I saw Nott's face clearly. I told you about the fact that the oath slows me down if I try to fight a Slytherin. And Zabini and Parkinson must have seen him, since they were the ones who stopped him. But they still didn't say anything. That makes me think their loyalty to a fellow Slytherin outweighs everything else, even their desperate appeals to me to save them from your whinging."

"I _do not _do that," Malfoy said.

Harry snapped the fingers of his free hand in front of the git's face. "Priorities, remember? All of you turned your backs on me to protect Nott—well, you might not have done it in the same way, since you didn't know it was him, but it's roughly in the same way. You don't want to tell me about the Invisibility Cloak that I think he must have, since I couldn't spot the attacker who hit me with the first curse. You don't want to admit that he must have some motivation. You'd rather think I was lying. Admit it, Malfoy. You might want me, but that's always going to give way to House loyalty. God forbid, though, that Gryffindor House loyalty be the biggest force in _my_ life. You were jealous when I spent time with my friends. But that's different from your desire to protect Nott from any reprisal, isn't it? Because you're you, and I'm me, and I'm just inferior to your precious Slytherins, that's all."

Malfoy stared at him, breathing fast. "You take that back," he said. "Do you know how much they've ridiculed me because I wanted you? Do you know how much fear I've endured over the last few years that someone would kill you _because _they knew you were important to me?"

"No," Harry said, and folded his arms. That also made the handcuffs tug in satisfying ways, and pulled Malfoy closer to him with a wild expression on his face. "You never showed it. If I was really important to you during third year, when you did your best to have Hagrid sacked, and during fifth year, when you joined the Inquisitorial Squad, I sure as fuck couldn't _see _it. But you want me to acknowledge all these feelings now, without acknowledging me. Simple question, Malfoy. Do you want me enough to support the expulsion of one of your friends who actually tried to kill me, or not?"

"It's more complicated than that," Malfoy said, running his hand through his hair. "It has to be."

"And the way that the Gryffindors bullied you was more complicated than just hatred, too," Harry responded. "That didn't make it less wrong." He paused, but Malfoy still stood there with his precious little conflicted expression. Harry snorted. "Maybe I was wrong. Maybe _Nott _is the one you like to fuck, that you've been fucking." Bile caught in his throat, but he went on, because Malfoy's face was darkening, and that could only be a good thing. "Maybe I was only a diversion, and you wanted to see me humiliated and begging for you. Well, thanks for the education, Malfoy. The next time a bloke begs me to be his boyfriend, I'll know better. I think I'll try women again and see if Ginny wants—"

Malfoy made a complex, wordless sound, rather like a combination of a growl and a scream, and then climbed on top of him in the stretcher, kissing him furiously. Harry dissipated the handcuff charm with a thought, but Malfoy didn't seem to notice. He pinned Harry beneath him with his body and bit his neck fiercely.

_Good, _Harry thought, and arched his hips to meet Malfoy's assault, grabbing his neck and biting, too, at the place where he could see the collarbone poking through Malfoy's shirt. _He's started now, and he's not going to stop. That's the Gryffindor way: irritate your enemies into declaring themselves._

"You have no idea how fucking _mine_ you already are," Malfoy said, looking, horror of horrors, _ungroomed_ with his hair hanging in his eyes, and reached down to grab Harry's cock. Harry felt his eyes roll back into his skull and took a deep breath, but he wasn't going to be outmatched. He grabbed Malfoy's cock, too, and squeezed painfully.

Malfoy hissed and rocked into his grip like it was the best thing ever. Harry grinned up at him. "Pain with your pleasure, huh?" he gasped out. "That'll be useful to know."

"Shut up," Malfoy said gutturally, and bit Harry's ear. Harry rolled his head helplessly to the side, his mouth working open and shut, and Malfoy sneered and laughed at the same time. "You w-were saying?"

"Shut up," Harry retorted in turn, and then began to grip and slide and squeeze, hardly able to move his hand at all because of the weight of Malfoy's body and the way he squirmed on top of Harry, all elbows and knees and fierce eyes and fiercer hands, pinching and prodding and exploring along the curves of Harry's hips and arse.

Malfoy laughed at him, flecks of spit flying into Harry's face. They were as warm as the kiss Malfoy gave him a moment later, tongue sliding along his, then pulling back and mingling with his teeth as he bit at Harry's lips.

"Better like this, isn't it?" Harry asked, and brought his legs up around Malfoy's hips, squeezing and clamping down at the same time as he gripped the head of Malfoy's cock and twisted sideways.

Malfoy groaned like—well, like someone having sex, Harry had to admit, since no other good comparisons occurred to him—and then Harry felt him shuddering more deeply than he had so far, his bones shaking in his skin. There was wetness on his hand a moment later, and Harry shouted in victory.

Not for long, though. Malfoy drove his hips down and rubbed them sideways, on top of Harry's hand and groin and his own rubbing hand, and somehow combined that with a long, languid, slow stroke at the same time.

Harry had never felt so good as he did when he came. He was half-sobbing, but it didn't matter, because no one could hear it when Malfoy was kissing him again, his teeth and tongue driving deep, and he was humping Malfoy's fingers, but no one could see that because he was beneath Malfoy, and there was cloth and skin and _pressure _all around him, and it was _good_.

Malfoy kissed him when he finished and wrapped one possessive arm around his shoulders. Harry closed his eyes. He didn't think he'd need the handcuffs again.

But he resolved to keep the spell at the top of his mind, just in case. You never knew.

* * *

"Do you have anything to say for yourself, Mr. Nott?"

Just like Harry had thought, Nott had shriveled up when the Headmistress confronted him, and had stared at the floor as Harry recited his suspicions about the attacks and about Nott having an Invisibility Cloak that had allowed him to get away for the first one. Zabini and Parkinson, called on to describe what they'd seen, had reluctantly agreed it was Nott, appearing from beneath an Invisibility Cloak. He had aimed his spells mostly at Harry, but some of them might have hit his Housemates if they weren't under the Shield Charm, which was why the oath had alerted Harry to them being in danger.

Malfoy—or Draco, as Harry supposed he had to call him now—had cast several spells that made sure they didn't _look_ freshly shagged when they finally reached the Headmistress's office. He leaned forwards now and shook his head at Harry. "You could have cast a Shield Charm that covered all three of you," he whispered.

"I thought it was someone who wanted to harm Zabini and Parkinson, not me," Harry whispered back. "And I was slower with my spells because of that oath, remember."

Malfoy pursed his lips. "We will have to do something about that," he murmured, and then returned his gaze to Nott.

"Well?" McGonagall repeated now, rising to her feet as if she thought that would encourage Nott to confess. Who knew, maybe it would, Harry thought. Her face was white with rage and maybe disappointment, too. "Do you deny the accusations?"

Nott looked up and let his gaze travel slowly from face to face. He looked at Harry for the longest time, and then, as he stared, cracks seemed to break out in the witless mask he'd worn so far. He gritted his teeth, and his words emerged as though someone was pulling them out of him.

"How long did the bullying go on, before you noticed it? If you were such a bloody _hero_—" he ignored McGonagall's attempt to scold him for language "—you would have noticed before it got as bad as it did. You should have either left us alone to solve our own problems or jumped in as soon as they started. Coming in late just makes it look as though you want to be the big hero again, saving the poor Slytherins. Well, we can take care of ourselves, and we don't need _you _to save us. This was about making you look good, not about us."

Harry sighed. "That's not true," he said, "but I don't even want to argue with you, Nott. Yeah, it's complicated and all that shite." This time, McGonagall tried to let Harry have his share of the scolding, but Harry ignored her and continued talking, since it had worked so well for Nott. "Yeah, you have the right to feel pain and anger. But instead of talking to me about it or denouncing me or hexing me, you tried to _kill_ me. Excuse me if I don't feel that much sympathy for you."

Nott bared his teeth, but didn't answer. McGonagall intervened again. "You claim responsibility for the attacks, then?" she asked sternly. "Both the earlier attack on Mr. Potter that resulted in his near-death and this one that left burns on him?"

"Yes, of course," Nott said, clasping his hands behind his back and lifting his head as though he was a soldier facing execution. "I did it. Why should I deny it? I hate Potter and all he stands for, this Gryffindor do-good philosophy that always shows up too late to help the real victims. Where were you last year, Potter, when we were being tortured and forced to torture? Where were you when Death Eaters took over the school? That was the real point we could have used a hero, and you didn't show up until the end, when it was safe and you could claim the credit for defeating the Dark Lord."

Harry rolled his eyes. "You would succeed a lot better at making me feel guilty if you hadn't tried to _kill_ me," he said. "I'll be happy to continue repeating that until you take it in, but I don't think that it will take."

Malfoy put an arm around his shoulders and leaned forwards. "Yes, Theo," he said. Nott looked at him immediately, and Harry was reminded of the way all the other Slytherins seemed to jump to obey Malfoy, too. "And if you thought we'd thank you for getting rid of Harry, might I remind you that he's my boyfriend now? Imagine what the atmosphere would have been like for you in Slytherin once I found that out."

"Blaise and Pansy would have defended me," Nott muttered.

Harry looked at Parkinson and Zabini, both of whom looked uncomfortable. "I can forgive them for that," he said nobly. "After all, they were caught between loyalty to a Housemate and loyalty to someone they thought might take a problem off their hands. And they didn't try to_ kill_ me."

Zabini gave him a faint smile. "Thanks, Potter," he said. Parkinson nodded, looking sober.

"And thanks for the reminder that not all Slytherins are spotless," Harry continued in a sweet voice, returning his attention to Nott. "I'll need it as I try to figure out what to do about this oath and the _friends _I'm making in Slytherin." Malfoy leaned on him heavily when Harry said the word "friends," but Harry figured he would just have to put up with the emphasis on the word rather than a full-blown snogging session.

"I believe we have enough evidence," McGonagall said briskly. "The Aurors shall be summoned to deal with Mr. Nott, since he is of age, and he shall be expelled." Nott just gave her a sullen dog's look and said nothing.

The rest of them left the Headmistress's office when she'd taken Nott's wand and his Invisibility Cloak—still tucked up in a pocket of his robe—and firecalled the Aurors. Harry expected Malfoy to let him go once they were out in the corridor, but he gripped him more firmly and turned to face Parkinson and Zabini instead.

"Now," said Malfoy. "If I ever hear that you've plotted to conceal harm against Harry again, I'll close you up in a room with only a recording of my voice that will play over and over the words I spoke to you the first night we came back this year."

Both Zabini and Parkinson went pale. Harry didn't think he wanted to know why. But then Parkinson coughed, nudged Zabini, and said, "Remember, he'll be quieter now that he has Potter."

Zabini brightened, nodded, handed Harry a look of pity, and then turned and led the way down the corridor, Parkinson striding at his side. Harry watched them until they were out of sight, then glanced at Malfoy.

"You can let go of my shoulders," he said.

Malfoy turned Harry around to face him instead. Harry became very aware then of how quiet the corridor was and of how alone they were. He licked his lips and tried to meet Malfoy's bright, fierce gaze, not sure what would happen when he did. It was one thing to grope each other on top of a stretcher, and quite another to have a discussion.

"I don't plan ever to let you go," Malfoy said softly. "You know that, don't you?"

Harry blinked. That wasn't hard at all. "What part of chaining you to me with handcuffs implies that I disagree with that?"

Malfoy blinked, and gave him a tentative smile. "It took you a while to understand. I wanted to say the first point now, clearly, so that there's no confusion."

Harry shook his head. "I know what I want and what you want _now_, and what we need. But I still want to know why you avoided me for the past week and acted as though you didn't want to date me anymore."

Malfoy looked at the ground and shrugged. "I wanted more chasing, more of your attention. I wanted to make sure that it wouldn't fade the moment I looked elsewhere. I wanted—maybe I did want you to suffer for six years. I don't know."

"Fine," Harry said. "I don't mind you doing something stupid as long as it's in the past and you won't do it again."

"I wouldn't say that," Malfoy said, glancing up. "There's still your oath and the fact that our Houses don't get along. That makes for a lot of conflict."

"Your friends seem to be relieved at the idea, and mine will be by now, too," Harry said dryly. "As for others, they can object. I draw the line when someone tries to hex or kill me."

"Yes, you made that very clear with Theo." Malfoy gave him a wistful look for a moment. "You understand why we might have stood by him? But I honestly didn't know that he'd attacked you in the corridor yesterday, I swear."

Harry nodded. "I can't understand everything you went through last year," he said, and squeezed Malfoy's hands. "I just object to people taking it out on me _physically_."

"That's right," Malfoy said. "I'm the only one who should be able to do that." He stepped closer, and Harry was aware of both his own quickened breathing and Malfoy's predatory gaze. "I think I'd like to do it again right now, in fact."

Harry smiled and said, to test it out as much as because he wanted to hear what it would sound like, "Draco."

_Draco_ kissed him hard enough to make Harry's head spin and forced him down to the stone, hands already prying back his robes.

He was the one who chose the location, which meant he was the one responsible for the detention they received when McGonagall came out of her office and found them rolling around on the stones, horribly sweaty and mostly naked.

Seeing how long the glaze took to disappear from Draco's eyes even when McGonagall yelled, because he was too busy looking at _him_, made Harry certain he would be able to bear harder things than detentions, as long as Draco was there.

And if Draco tried not to be there, or someone tried to drag him away…

There were always the handcuffs.

**The End.**


End file.
